MIDDLE EAST:A fresh confrontation between president Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan's supreme court loomed last night following a legal challenge to the deportation of Nawaz Sharif on Monday.
Mr Sharif's lawyers lodged a court petition saying that government security agents acted illegally when they bundled the former prime minister on to an aircraft for Saudi Arabia just four hours after landing in Islamabad.
The former prime minister is relying on last month's supreme court verdict that he had an "inalienable" right of return and should not be hindered by the government.
The supreme court, previously a rubber stamp for Pakistan's military-led governments, has become a powerful check on the powers of Gen Musharraf. It is headed by his arch-rival, chief justice Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry, whom he unsuccessfully tried to fire last March.
But the Sharif deportation suggests that Gen Musharraf's mood is hardening, and the courts are under increasing pressure. On Monday supporters of the MQM, a pro-Musharraf party whose leader lives in London, stormed a Karachi courthouse holding an inquiry into political violence last May. The judges adjourned the hearing for a week.
Also in Karachi an outspoken anti-government lawyer was shot dead in a taxi on his way to work.
Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) party was in disarray following an iron-fisted government clampdown. The party said 4,000 activists had been arrested in recent days while the interior ministry put the figure at 1,000.
Among those in detention last night was spokesman Ahsan Iqbal, who was being sent to a prison in Bahawalpur, near the Indian border, for 30 days.
"This is a very serious crisis of governance, a blatant violation of the supreme court," said Mr Iqbal by phone last night. "It is no longer about Nawaz Sharif - it's about the rule of law in this country."
He warned that Pakistan's secular parties would give rise to greater religious fundamentalism.
"When they crack down on us, they create a vacuum for the religious parties to gain ground," he said.
Mr Iqbal spoke during a six-hour parole break to attend a relative's funeral. He was due to return to jail last night.
Meanwhile, a suicide bombing in North-West Frontier province highlighted the growing threat of Islamist violence.
Eighteen people died on a bus in Dera Ismail Khan as police tried to search a suspicious looking passenger. Witnesses claimed that the bomber appeared to be 14 or 15 years old.