Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Rt. Hon. Baroness Syeeda Warsi, MP Cabinet Minister & Chairperson of the UK Conservative Party while talking to media after a meeting. - APP photo

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Tuesday that his ministry was not pursuing the matter of extradition of former president Pervez Musharraf from Britain.

“We are not pursuing the extradition of Gen (retd) Musharraf from the UK,” he said at a press conference which was also addressed by British Minister for Immigration Damian Green and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, chairperson of the ruling Conservative Party.

A joint investigation team of the Federal Investigation Agency, which is reinvestigating the Benazir Bhutto's assassination case, visited on Friday the farm-house of the former president in Chak Shahzad and served the warrants for his arrest issued by an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi.

“The arrest warrants have been issued by the court at the request of FIA and one of them bears the mailing address of Mr Musharraf's London apartment,” an FIA source said. Gen Musharraf has been accused of not providing adequate security to Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack outside Liaquat Bagh on Dec 27, 2007.

When contacted, FIA Director General Waseem Ahmed said the agency was not pursuing Musharraf's extradition. He replied in the negative when asked if the FIA had contacted Interpol for his extradition.

A source in Interpol said there were two processes to bring an accused back from a country -- extradition through legal process and directly through Interpol's administrative process.

He said the extradition of an accused from the UK was a complex issue because Pakistan had no extradition treaty with that country. “But even then Pakistan handed over a number of wanted people to the UK during the Musharraf regime,” he added.