Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has created a political prisoner out of an eight-year-old boy whose only fault is that he happens to be the youngest child of detained Pakistan Chief Justice Ifthikar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Eight-year-old Balaaj is subject to the same draconian restrictions that have restricted his parents and two siblings to within the walls of their home in Islamabad for the past several months.

Details of Balaaj’s incarceration have been revealed by former cabinet minister and lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, President of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association.

The Cambridge-educated Ahsan, who said in an exclusive interview that his finest professional moment came when the Chief Justice talked of retaining him as his lawyer, says the house arrest conditions are so severe that Chaudhry and his family are locked up inside their house, effectively making it a sub-jail.

“As many as 10 Supreme Court judges are presently detained in house arrest”. Ahsan explained. “The issue with the Chief Justice is that he’s been locked up inside the building of his house. It’s a large house, no doubt, but the children are not allowed to come out into the verandah, or even for the winter sun of Islamabad. It’s a terrible thing for four and a half months. I am sure it gets terribly claustrophobic.”

For Balaaj, “there is no question of school, not even the front lawn or the verandah of the house, school is a way off distance.”

Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, leaders of the two main political parties that have pledged to work together in a coalition government after the recent elections, have pledged to release Chaudhry once the new government is in place. They have asked for 30 days to release the Chief Justice and the judges, promising that the Chief Justice is their first priority.

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