LAHORE/ISLAMABAD, 7 December 2007 — A Pakistani court yesterday granted bail to the brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a nine-year-old murder case, his lawyer said.

Shahbaz Sharif, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and former chief minister of Punjab province, surrendered himself before the court and requested bail, which was granted, lawyer Khawaja Mohammad Haris told AFP.

“The court granted pre-arrest interim bail to my client till Dec. 8 after I requested that he could not follow the legal proceedings because he was living abroad and had not violated any law,” Haris said.

Last week, Pakistan election authorities rejected Shahbaz’s candidacy on the same charge and for another bank loan default case.

Shahbaz, with his brother and their industrialist family, was sent into exile in 2000, one year after Musharraf ousted then-Premier Nawaz Sharif from power in a bloodless coup. The Sharif family returned to Pakistan early this month after seven years in exile.

Government sources said Shahbaz faces criminal charges in an anti-terrorism court for ordering the killing of five people during his 1997-99 tenure as chief minister in Punjab province.

According to prosecutors, police in 1998 killed five students from a madrasa, on the orders of Shahbaz, who suspected them to be involved in acts of terrorism.

Police yesterday stopped Sharif from meeting the country’s chief justice, who is under effective house.

Sharif was turned back by around 300 policemen manning concrete and barbed wire barricades near the Islamabad residence of deposed Judge Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, an AFP reporter saw. Hundreds of Sharif’s supporters chanted “Long live Nawaz Sharif” after their leader was turned back and burned a large poster of President Pervez Musharraf.

“I have come here to express solidarity with the chief justice and other judges,” Sharif told the crowd after police refused to let him through.

“I want to tell them that the entire nation stands by them. We will not rest until all these judges are restored to their pre-Nov. 3 positions,” he said.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto tried to visit Chaudhry last month, and was also blocked.

Sharif and Benazir’s parties are still negotiating over demands they plan to put forward to Musharraf.

A boycott by the two main opposition parties and smaller allies would rob the Jan. 8 vote of credibility and prolong instability in a nuclear-armed country that is crucial to US efforts to fight Al-Qaeda and bring peace to Afghanistan.

Opposition officials said the two parties differed over whether to demand the restoration of 37 judges, including Chaudhry. Benazir says the new Parliament should decide on the fate of the judges.

“There is no question of compromise on this issue. We are saying it should be before the election. The PPP says it should be after the election,” said Javed Hashmi, a senior official in Sharif’s party tipped as a possible candidate for prime minister, referring to Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party.

“This is the only thing where we have, up to this time, not been able to agree,” Hashmi said.

Tens of thousands of lawyers stayed away from the country’s courts yesterday from the southern financial hub of Karachi to Peshawar in the northwest to demand the reinstatement of the judiciary, Pakistan Bar Council said. Hundreds of lawyers clashed with police in the southeastern city of Multan.

Army Retakes Key Towns in Swat

Troops retook two key towns from supporters of a pro-Taleban cleric in northwest Pakistan and freed dozens of people from a rebel jail set up in a girls’ school, officials said yesterday.

The gains reported by the government in the troubled Swat Valley are the latest since President Pervez Musharraf ordered an operation to clear the scenic tourist area of militants. Operations in the mountain area during the past two weeks have killed nearly 250 militants as well as around 15 soldiers and 30 civilians, the army and local officials say.

Soldiers on Wednesday took back control of the town of Matta — where the rebels had renamed the police station the “Taleban station” — and then expelled militants from Khawazakhela yesterday, army statements said. “Local people of Matta have greatly welcomed the arrival of security forces,” the statement said.

Security forces also dismantled a prison set up by militants inside a girls’ primary school in Matta and freed dozens of people, an intelligence official told AFP.

Residents said Swat was under a total curfew and troops backed by helicopter gunships were marching through different towns and villages.

Provincial government spokesman Amjad Iqbal said soldiers were yesterday securing the headquarters of radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, the militant leader campaigning for the imposition of Shariah law.