Shoe hurled at returning Musharraf in court (VIDEO)
Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is greeted by supporters after landing on Pakistani soil at Karachi airport on March 24, 2013 in Karachi, Pakistan.
A lawyer hurled a shoe — an extremely offensive act in South Asia — at returning ex-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf on Friday, as he headed to court to see his pre-arrest bail extended by 15 days.
The shoe missed Musharraf, who recently returned to Pakistan to considerable controversy after four years of self-imposed exile, and the offender was promptly escorted from court by plain clothed security, noted AFP.
Read more from GlobalPost: Musharraf: Back in Pakistan, but not better than ever
Musharraf had headed to court to request an extension to his pre-arrest bail of 15 days, which was granted to him. The former president has been charged in a number of criminal cases in his native land.
AFP writes that around 20 lawyers appeared to protest Musharraf's controversial return at the Sindh high court on March 29, calling him a dictator and demanding that he be hanged for his offenses.
This isn't the 69-year old Musharraf's first close call with a shoe: in 2011, another angered opponent threw a shoe at him in London, which also failed to hit the politician.
Musharraf hopes to win seats for his party in the upcoming Pakistani elections, but many observers feel that a comeback for the embattled former president is unlikely — as evidenced by the decidedly modest turnout at the Karachi airport when he flew in on March 24.
“I am feeling concerned about the unknown … there are a lot of unknown factors of terrorism and extremism, unknown factors of legal issues, unknown factors of how much I will be able to perform [In the elections],” Musharraf admitted before boarding the flight to Pakistan.
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