Pakistan detains lawyer opposed to Musharrraf

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities on Saturday detained a prominent opposition lawyer who spearheaded a campaign against President Pervez Musharraf a day after he was released from three months in detention.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a former member of parliament and cabinet minister under assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was first detained under emergency powers that Musharraf invoked on November 3.

He was freed late on Thursday in the eastern city of Lahore. But he was again placed under house arrest shortly after trying to fly to Bhutto's home province of Sindh to express condolences over her assassination to her husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

"Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan has been detained for 30 days," a senior home ministry official in Lahore told Reuters. He did not give a reason for the detention.

Ahsan had been defiant after his release and insisted the president step down.

"I tell Musharraf he should go and the army should go back to barracks," he said while addressing hundreds of lawyers in Lahore on Friday.

Musharraf, the former army chief who took power in a 1999 coup, outraged the judiciary and sparked an opposition campaign against him when he tried to dismiss the then Supreme Court chief justice last March.

Ahsan acted as chief counsel for the judge, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who was purged when Musharraf declared emergency rule, along with dozens of other judges seen as hostile to Musharraf's re-election in October while still army chief.

Musharraf has dismissed opposition calls for Chaudhry to be reinstated, saying he was guilty of wrongdoing. Chaudhry and several other judges and lawyers are still under house arrest.

Authorities renewed detention orders for senior opposition lawyer Tariq Mehmood and placed him under house arrest in the capital, Islamabad.

"These orders have no legal and constitutional justification. In fact, there is no law and constitution prevailing in the country," Mehmood told Reuters by telephone.

(Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)