ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top court on Wednesday upheld a special court’s earlier decision to sentence late former military ruler Pervez Musharraf to death in a high treason case, local media widely reported. 

A special court convicted Musharraf and sentenced him to death in 2019 for suspending Pakistan’s constitution in 2007 and imposing a state of emergency in the country. Neither Pakistan’s parliament nor superior judiciary had validated the action, which under the law is punishable by death or life imprisonment.

In January 2020, the Lahore High Court (LHC) overturned Musharraf’s death penalty and declared the special court’s verdict “unconstitutional.” The former president was living in self-exile in Dubai since 2016 and had failed to attend the special court’s hearings until his death in February 2023. 

“The impugned passed on January 13, 2020, by the Lahore High Court (LHC) […] is not sustainable and accordingly set aside,” Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa was quoted as saying by Pakistani newspaper Dawn. 

A four-member bench headed by the chief justice announced the decision as it took up a set of appeals relating to the LHC’s order declaring the death sentence unconstitutional.

Pakistan Bar Council Vice-Chairman Haroon-ur-Rashid and senior counsels Hamid Khan, Rashid A. Rizvi, and others had challenged the LHC verdict on grounds that it had no “legal or territorial jurisdiction.”

The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC), in a statement issued to the media, appreciated the Supreme Court’s verdict. 

“The whole legal community has welcomed this historic judgment and also demanded from the federal government to initiate the case under Article 6 against delinquents and those responsible, who violated Article 5 of the Constitution of Pakistan,” the PBC said. 

The council praised the Supreme Court for playing its constitutional role, hoping that the verdict would strengthen the principle of supremacy of the constitution and “would be remembered as an example in the political history of Pakistan.”

Musharraf, who passed away last year at the age of 79 from protracted illness, was appointed army chief by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1998 — a move Sharif would later come to regret when the military ruler ousted him in a bloodless military coup in 1999. Musharraf then served as Pakistan’s president from 2001 to 2008.

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Washington sought Pakistan’s support in the “War on Terror,” and Musharraf became a close ally of the then US administration of George Bush.

Musharraf ruled as army chief until 2007 when he quit, trading the military post for a second five-year term as president.

He stepped down as president also in 2008 over fears of being impeached by Pakistan’s ruling coalition. He subsequently left the country but returned in 2013 with the hope of regaining power as a civilian at the ballot box. He encountered a slew of criminal charges, however, and within a year, he was barred for life from running for public office.

In 2016, after a travel ban was lifted, Musharraf left for Dubai to seek medical treatment, remaining there ever since.