RAWALPINDI, Sept 16: Former President Pervez Musharraf’s wife Sehba Musharraf on Friday filed a petition with an anti-terrorism court seeking a stay on its order to confiscate the properties and freeze the accounts of her husband in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case.

The petition was submitted to the court of Judge Shahid Rafique by Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, the counsel for Sehba Musharraf. The judge will decide the fate of the petition on Saturday (today).

Talking to Dawn, Chaudhry Fawad said the former president was illegally included in the case.

In her petition, Sehba Musharraf said the orders against her husband declaring him an absconder and attachment of his properties be withdrawn or recalled and the attached property be released to the petitioner.

She said she had been informed that this court had proceeded under Section 88 of the CrPC and attached the properties including a farmhouse in Chak Shahzad, a plot in Singhar Housing Colony, Gwadar, and bank accounts mentioned in a letter of the State Bank of Pakistan dated June 23, 2011.

She said the whole exercise had been conducted in haste without caring for the fact. It has been settled by apex court of Pakistan that a person could not be declared absconder for the purpose of issuing proclamation under Section 87 of the CrPC if he had already left the country. She said all the proceedings against her husbands were unlawful, without jurisdiction and against the principle of natural justice.

“Presumably at the relevant time, Nawaz Sharif, an arch political rival of my husband, exercised phenomenal control over the federal agencies and the final report that has no nexus with the evidence has been filed by Khalid Qureshi, who is a nephew of Zulfiqar Khosa, senior vice president of PML-N, and cousin of Dost Mohammad Khosa, former chief minister of Punjab,” she said.

The petitioner said her husband resigned from the office of the president on August 18, 2008, and remained involved in social and family chores till March, 2009. He kept travelling in and out of Pakistan and during all this time not a word was said by anybody about his involvement in the high-profile murder case.

She said the court committed an error wherein the titles of the above referred properties were not examined carefully. As a matter of fact, the farmhouse in Chak Shahzad belongs to the petitioner and the order for their attachment was liable to be recalled/withdrawn on this ground.