Pakistani Army rejects probing former Generals: Report

The Pakistan Army's legal branch has concluded that there is no scope for the military to try former army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg and former ISI chief Lieutenant General Mohammad Asad Durrani for paying millions of rupees to politicians to rig the 1990 general election, a media report said on Monday. In a preliminary report presented to army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the legal branch concluded that the two retired generals could not be tried under the Army Act following the Supreme Court's order holding them responsible for the rigging of the polls. Mr Kayani has asked the Judge Advocate General's branch in the general headquarters to further study the case and to engage top lawyers to assess if the Army Act applies to the kind of acts that General Beg and Lieutenant General Durrani were involved in, The News quoted its sources as saying. Following top-level discussions between the civil and military leadership over the possibility of initiating criminal proceedings against General Beg and Lt Gen Durrani, the General Headquarters has started studying aspects of the Army Act to decide if the two generals would be tried by the military or the civilian government, the report said. However, the Pakistan People's Party-led government has not yet formally referred the matter to the army. The daily quoted its sources as saying that the civilian government might "find much in the prevailing statutes to deal with these cases without referring it to the army". Pakistan's Supreme Court held General Beg and Durrani responsible for rigging the 1990 polls in an order issued in response to a petition filed by former air force chief Asghar Khan.