HYDERABAD, April 15: April 13, 2004, will be remembered as a black day in the political history of Pakistan for it was on this day that PML-N leader Javed Hashmi was sentenced to 23-year imprisonment in a sedition case.

This was said by Mohammad Afzal Gujjar, provincial president, labour wing of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), former MNA Sahibzada Shabbir Ansari and other party leaders at a news conference at the press club here on Thursday.

They said that Mr Hashmi had joined the rank of Maulana Shoukat Ali and Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, who too had been convicted under the same sections of the Penal Code. They said that the voice of the PML-N leader was so powerful that it had shaken palaces of dictators and therefore enemies of democracy and parliament had put him away.

They said that it was an irony that a patriot and democrat like Hashmi was arrested on the charge of treason and convicted on the statements of a major and a captain. The leaders warned that the day was not far when the tormentors of Hashmi would have to face a peoples' court.

They said that the People's Party Patriots and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal could not be absolved of playing a dirty game because they had made President General Pervez Musharraf powerful by approving the Legal Framework Order.

They said that it had encouraged the general to arrest patriots like Mr Hashmi and Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and to launch operation against Muslims in Wana. They said that the conviction of Mr Hashmi was a clear message to Mian Shahbaz Sharif and his family that they would have to face similar fate if they returned to the country.

The PML (N) leaders said that haste shown in the passage of the National Security Council bill had proved that the law was meant to protect interests of the generals. They said that under the pro-USA government of President Musharraf, people were dying of hunger and committing suicide due to unemployment and lawlessness, and murders, terrorism and kidnappings had become the order of the day.

They pledged to continue struggle and appealed to masses and democratic forces to rise to the occasion and save Pakistan.They said that people respected the armed forces therefore they should go back to barracks as they had nothing to do with politics.