Suspended judge shrugs off Pakistan security alert

By Zeeshan Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's suspended top judge will travel to Lahore by road on Saturday, undeterred by government warnings of bomb threats in the country, to rally support for his legal battle with President Pervez Musharraf.

The authorities on Friday showed their fear of the support suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry is drawing, by detaining opposition activists across Punjab province ahead of his visit to the provincial capital.

Lahore police said they had taken nearly 400 people into custody as a "preventive measure".

Earlier on Friday, the government urged Chaudhry to travel by air rather than road because of "credible threats" of Islamist bomb attacks in the wake of an April 28 suicide attack on Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao.

The minister escaped with bruises but 28 people were killed in the blast, the latest in a long line of attacks by Islamist militants infuriated by Musharraf's alliance with Washington.

"In view of the hazardous security situation in the country, we have requested the chief justice to travel by air instead of road," Syed Kamal Shah, permanent secretary at the Interior Ministry, told Reuters.

The judge's lawyers, however, suspected the warning was an attempt to disrupt Chaudhry's campaign to assert the independence of the judiciary in the fight against misconduct charges levelled by Musharraf two months ago.

"The chief justice will be going by road along with a large number of lawyers," said Aitzaz Ahsan, Chaudhry's top lawyer.