ISLAMABAD (TIP):
The Pakistan government on Friday offered to bring former military ruler Pervez Musharraf’s ailing mother from Dubai in a special aircraft as a humanitarian gesture so that the two could be reunited. The government would “provide all available medical facilities for the treatment” of Musharraf’s 95-year-old mother, said a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. The government is ready to send a special plane or air ambulance to bring Musharraf’s mother to “Pakistan on humanitarian grounds so that she can get treatment in Pakistan and live with her son”, the statement said. Musharraf, who has a plethora of cases against him, is currently barred from travelling out of the country as he has been included in the interior ministry’s Exit Control List (ECL).

His petition to remove his name from the ECL, so that he could travel to Dubai to visit his mother, has already been rejected by the Sindh High Court. Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid said the independent judiciary will decide Musharraf’s fate. The former army chief is set to appear in a special court on January 1 to face charges of high treason for imposing emergency in 2007. Reacting to the government’s offer, Musharraf’s spokesperson Aasia Ishaque said it was a good gesture but was done because the government realised that he is not going to run away. “My first reaction is the government has finally understood that Musharraf is not going to run away and that is why this good gesture.

But (the mother’s) coming to Pakistan would depend on her health,” she said. “Even Musharraf wanted her to come to Pakistan but her health didn’t permit it.” Though Musharraf has been given bail in all the major cases against him, his name has not been removed from the ECL. He is the first general to face trial for treason. If convicted, he could get life imprisonment or the death penalty.