Pakistan allows Musharraf abroad for treatment

Pakistan has given the green light for former military ruler Pervez Musharraf to leave the country, a day after the Supreme Court lifted a ban on him travelling abroad, the interior minister said on Thursday.

Musharraf's lawyers said he needed to go abroad for urgent spinal treatment not available in Pakistan.

The retired general and former president was banned from leaving the country in 2013 after he returned to the country on an ill-fated mission to contest elections.

"Today lawyers of General Musharraf filed a proper application and in the light of Supreme Court decision, the government has allowed him to go abroad for medical treatment," the interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, told a press conference.

Khan said that Musharraf's lawyers had given guarantees that he would return to Pakistan after six weeks and that he would appear in court for ongoing cases against him.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the government to lift the travel ban on Musharraf, but the government, headed by his long-time rival Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, appealed the verdict.

In January, Musharraf was acquitted over the 2006 killing of a Baloch rebel leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti.

But there remain four cases against him -- one of treason for imposing emergency rule, as well as those involving the unlawful dismissal of judges, the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and a deadly raid on Islamabad's radical Red Mosque.

Musharraf ousted Sharif from power in 1999 in a bloodless coup and ruled Pakistan until democracy was restored in 2008.