Once Pakistan’s most sought-after man, former military ruler Pervez Musharraf was all alone on his birthday this month.
No cake was cut, no friends could join him and not even a family member was at the dinner table with the 70-year-old former President on August 11, in a dramatic turnaround of fate.
Police in the capital Islamabad rejected his request to meet political aides at his palatial farmhouse where he was under arrest.
Musharraf, who led nuclear-armed Pakistan for almost nine years, has been in all sorts of trouble since he was ousted by hostile political parties in August 2008.
He spent most of the ensuing years in exile, shuttling between Washington and Dubai and preparing to reinvent himself as a civilian politician to play a different role in Pakistan.
The retired Army General managed to cobble together a political party and secured guarantees from international backers to return home to contest Parliamentary Elections this year.
But those arrangements proved came to nothing when he made his homecoming in March.
He was deserted by trusted friends, barred by courts from standing in the election and ultimately put under house arrest by the Government.
The former military strongman now faces legal challenges, political isolation, an uncertain future and death threats from Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups.
An anti-terrorism court was expected to indict him on August 20 on charges of conspiracy to murder opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who died in a gun and bomb attack in 2007.
“Pervez Musharraf can face the death penalty or life imprisonment,” Government prosecutor Chaudhry Azhar Ali told dpa.
“That is what we will plead for.” He would be the first of Pakistan’s four military rulers to be indicted.
Defence lawyer Ahmed Raza Kasuri said the former President would plead not guilty. He laughed off suggestions Musharraf might be hanged or imprisoned for life in the case.
“There’s no evidence in this case. How can you blame head of the state for any murder in the country?” he said.
Some legal experts agreed that the “quality of evidence” against Musharraf in Bhutto’s death and other cases is not solid enough to convict him.
“They will fall like house of cards when trials begin,” Fawad Chaudhry, a leading Pakistani lawyer, said of the Government’s case.
New Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last month said that Musharraf would be tried for treason, a charge carrying the death penalty, for suspending the constitution and purging the judiciary in 2007.
The Government’s decision was on the orders of the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and many judges were among those sacked by Musharraf in 2007. They were reinstated by the next Government.
Fawad Chaudhry said decision to press treason charges appeared to have an “element of vendetta” on the part of the prime minister and the Chief Justice. Both of them were removed by Musharraf at different times, but they have regained power.
The lawyer, who was once a political aide to Musharraf, said the former ruler might be able to walk free once the Chief Justice retires in December.
He said international pressure or the powerful Pakistani military could save Musharraf from further humiliation.
But independent political analysts do not see any chance for him to become “relevant” in politics.
“He is gone, a spent force. I don’t think he can ever turn himself into a successful politician. The military might that was behind him is now gone,” analyst Zafarullah Khan said in Islamabad.
“Domestic realities have changed in Pakistan. Musharraf couldn’t realize it,” said Khan, referring to first-ever transition between two civilian Governments in the South Asian nation’s six-decade history, half of which has been spent under military rulers.
Security analysts question whether he would be able to live in Pakistan due to threats to his life from Al-Qaeda affiliated groups seemed more important.
“I hardly see any chance for him to live in Pakistan as a civilian person,” said analyst Fida Khan. “Al-Qaeda will definitely like to get him at any cost.” Taliban insurgents have vowed many times in recent months to send suicide bombers to kill him.
But Kasuri insisted that his client did not have any plans to leave Pakistan if he regains his freedom.
“He is here to stay,” he said.