ISLAMABAD, May 16: A Rs2 billion damages suit will be filed against President Gen Pervez Musharraf for blaming Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and his counsel for the May 12 Karachi violence.

Lead counsel for the Chief Justice Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan announced this while talking to reporters outside the Supreme Court building after the hearing of the Chief Justice's petition against the president.

Mr Ahsan said that he and the chief justice had travelled from Peshawar to Lahore through several large and densely-populated towns without any violence even though “at least 10 million people” came out to welcome the CJP along the route. Not a blade of grass was broken, he said. Although all opposition parties participated in the welcoming crowds, there was no violence. These visits, along with visits to Sukkhur and Hyderabad, were on the invitation of bar associations, he said.

But when they arrived at the Karachi Airport on May 12 at the invitation of the Sindh High Court Bar Association, Mr Ahsan said, they learnt that four people had already been shot dead in various parts of the city.

“Out hosts were not at the airport because all roads leading to it had been blocked by the Sindh government by placing huge containers. An attempt was also made by the administration to kidnap the CJP. Then a hostile MQM rally arrived at the airport and blocked their exit. They (the CJ and the lawyers) remained incommunicado at the airport for 10 hours until they were deported from Karachi,” he said.

He said that the violence had been the direct result of MQM's insistence to stage a rally in opposition to the Chief Justice's visit to Karachi on the day. Being an integral part of the government, he said, the MQM rally had been sponsored by the Sindh government.

“What right did they have to prevent any Pakistani from visiting Karachi, what to say of the Chief Justice of Pakistan? But the government of Sindh even cordoned off the Sindh High Court where the Chief Justice was to address members of the bar and several thousand lawyers were locked inside. Judges had to jump over the boundary walls to enter the high court premises,” Mr Ahsan said.

The government’s insistence, he said, through its integral ally the MQM, to stage a counter-rally on the same day led to the violence.

“Could the MQM government not have staged this rally one day before or after? What right did they have to stop people, any people, from going to receive the Chief Justice?” he asked.

He said that now the MQM and the government claimed that if the Chief Justice had not come, or had travelled by helicopter, there would have been no violence.

“In the evening on the same day when Karachi was burning, Gen Musharraf celebrated with drums and dancing horses in Islamabad and attributed the violence to me and the Chief Justice. This amounts to defamation and slander,” Mr Ahsan said.

He said that Karachi needed a healing hand, not recriminations and false allegations. The MQM government, he said, should admit its fault and mala fide intentions, and declare now that it would desist from any counter-rally or resistance when the Chief Justice was next invited to Karachi by the bar association.

“Let those who want to come to receive him do so freely. Let those who do not want to greet him exercise their free choice of not doing so. Let there be no coercion or bitterness. Let there be peace. Let the confidence of Karachi, the premier city of Pakistan, be restored,” he said.

He said that since Gen Musharraf had directly implicated him, he was constrained to sue Gen Musharraf for damages in a court of law in the sum of Rs2 billion for libel, recover the amount from Gen Mushrraf's personal assets and estate and then donate the recovered amount to the people of Karachi to help heal the wounds.