Pakistani lawyers relax protest boycott of courts

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani lawyers agitating for the reinstatement of judges removed when President Pervez Musharraf invoked emergency rule, said on Monday they will relax a boycott of courts as it was hurting ordinary people.

Musharraf imposed emergency rule and suspended the constitution on November 3 in order to oust judges who appeared set to annul his re-election by parliament for a second five-year term.

Some 60 judges, including then Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, were replaced after they refused to take an oath under the provisional constitutional order promulgated by Musharraf.

To support the axed judges, a lawyers movement that sprang to Chaudhry's defense in March when Musharraf first suspended him, launched a boycott of the courts.

The Pakistan Bar Council decided at a meeting on Sunday in the northwest city of Peshawar to reduce the boycott to one day a week, Thursday, and one hour every day, as a concession to public interest.

A statement said that because of the backlog caused by the 12-week boycott "a large number of people were facing hardship and privation before false criminal cases against them and the common litigants are facing enormous difficulties in determination of their genuine claims."

Although emergency rule was ended on December 15, Chaudhry and several other judges remain under house arrest, as do a few leading lawyers, including former cabinet minister Aitzaz Ahsan, a member of the party of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

The council said lawyers still recognized Chaudhry as the legitimate chief justice, along with other judges who refused to take the oath, and they refused to recognize their replacements.

Lawyers will hold a protest march to Chaudhry's residence in Islamabad on February 9 in support of the ousted chief justice.

(Reporting by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)