KARACHI: Former President Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf got at least two more weeks of relief on Friday when the Sindh High Court extended his bail in three separate cases.

However, the court restrained the ex-military ruler from leaving Pakistan without permission.

Angry lawyers protested and chanted slogans against Musharraf when he appeared in court, and one of them threw a shoe at the ex-dictator as he walked to a court room to extend his bail.

A group of around 20 lawyers had gathered to protest against the former military ruler at the Sindh High Court building, shouting “he’s a dictator and he should be hanged” before one of them hurled the shoe, witnesses said.

The shoe did not hit Musharraf, TV footage showed. Witnesses said the perpetrator was taken away by plain-clothed security officials.

Musharraf, who has returned to the country after four year of self-imposed exile to contest general elections, has been implicated in three high-profile cases in which he was facing arrest warrants.

A single-bench of the SHC comprising of Chief Justice Mushir Alam extended Musharraf’s transitory bail for 15 days in the case of ‘illegal confinement’ of 62 judges after he declared a state of emergency in the country on November 3, 2007

Separately, a divisional bench of the court headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah granted bail extension for 21 days to Musharraf in the other two cases in which he was facing non-bailable arrest warrants.

The cases are the murder of former governor and chief minister of Balochistan Nawab Akbar Bugti in August 2007 and the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in a gun-and-bomb attack in Rawalpindi in December 2007.