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Pakistani Court Annuls Death Penalty on Former Ruler Musharraf

The top court in Lahore, Pakistan, has reversed the guilty verdict, as well as death sentence, handed down by a special court last month on Pervez Musharraf, a former military ruler now living in self-exile in Dubai. Monday’s court decision found that the special three-judge panel’s decisions in December lacked constitutional validity. The death sentence by hanging was handed down for Musharraf’s declaration in 2007 of a state of emergency that suspended most personal freedoms. But it was one clause in particular that garnered attention: One of the sentencing judges demanded inclusion of the stipulation that “if found dead [before he can be executed], his corpse is to be dragged” to a square outside the parliament in Islamabad and “hung up for three days.” Musharraf, a general, came to power in 1999 by overthrowing prime minister Nawaz Sharif.