Pakistan’s former military dictator Pervez Musharraf has been shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a Dubai hospital where he is undergoing treatment. According to reports in Pakistan media, Musharraf’s condition is critical.
Musharraf left Pakistan for Dubai for treatment of amyloidosis, a rare condition which has weakened his nervous system, in 2016 and has not returned since.
He was indicted by a special court in Pakistan of high treason in 2014. The previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had filed the treason case against Musharraf over the imposition of extra-constitutional emergency in November 2007.
Musharraf has not appeared in court for the trial due to deteriorating health. The special court, which is hearing his case, accepted Musharraf’s plea on May 2 to postpone the hearing until the end of Ramzan on June 4, according to a media report. The case will now be heard on June 12, Pakistan media reported.
Last month, Musharraf was admitted to a hospital in Dubai after suffering a reaction from the rare disease for which he is already under treatment.
Giving details of his ailments, his lawyer told the court in an application that Musharraf is suffering from cardiac amyloidosis (congestive heart failure), chronic kidney disease (high creatinine in renal system), excessive somnolence (hypersomnia), spinal injury and fracture.
It stressed that the former president came to Pakistan on March 24, 2013, on his own free will to face the Benazir Bhutto assassination case, judges’ detention case and Akbar Bugti case and that the high treason case was initiated subsequent to his arrival in the country.
The application highlighted that Musharraf’s absence from the trial court was not deliberate, wilful or an excuse to avoid the ongoing criminal proceedings, the report said.
In the light of genuine life-threatening illness and permission by the government to travel abroad for the treatment, he should not be treated as fugitive or proclaimed offender as was declared through the special court’s interim order of June 19, 2016, it said.
According to the latest assessment of his health on April 29 at the American Hospital in Dubai, Musharraf’s health has been termed unsafe in case he discontinued treatment and travelled, the application argued.
