Pakistan authorities put a prominent lawyer back under house arrest Saturday after he tried to visit the grave of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, his spokesman said.
Aitzaz Ahsan’s detention came just two days after he had been released from three months of house arrest. Ahsan, the president of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association, was first arrested during President Pervez Musharraf’s crackdown under a state of emergency last year.
Police stopped Ahsan at the airport in the eastern city of Lahore and told him he could not fly to Sindh province where he planned to visit Bhutto’s grave. Bhutto was assassinated Dec. 27 while leaving an election campaign rally.
Sindh Home Minister Akhtar Zamin said Ahsan had been banned from the province. “We are in an election process, and we don’t want anybody to come into the province and disrupt the election process,” Zamin said.
Ahsan returned home, telling reporters that the ban was illegal and had been issued on the federal government’s orders.
“I was just going to condole the death of our slain leader, but the government is scared and took this illegal action,” he said. “We will contest this move.”
