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Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani opposition leader, has been placed under house arrest, a move that is likely to heighten political turmoil in the country.
Officials from his party said on Sunday that Sharif had been detained in the city of Lahore, hours before he was due to address a protest rally.
"Sharif has been ordered not to leave his house in Lahore for three days," Ijaz Ahmed, a local police officer, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
Sharif's brother, Shahbaz, who is also a politician and senior member of the PML-N, has also been placed under house arrest.
Sharif had vowed to join an anti-government "long march" by lawyers and opposition activists pushing for the restoration of judges deposed by Pervez Musharraf, the former president.
The judges, including Iftikar Chaudhry, the chief justice, have yet to be reinstated under Ali Asif Zardari, the current president.
Opposition detained
"After intense political negotiations to try to bring this crisis to an end, it looks like the government has taken the final option of house arrest," Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reported from Lahore.
"On Saturday, Nawaz Sharif addressed a rally in Model Town. Basically, that rally was a fiery speech telling people to go out into the streets, to sit-in. That seems to have angered the government and led to the house arrest."
Ahsan Iqbal, the information secretary for Sharif's PML-N, condemned the house arrest order and denied that Sharif was a destabilizing influence in Pakistan.
"Mr Nawaz Sharif ... has categorically stated that if Mr Zardari restores the judges he can enjoy uninterrupted government for four years," he told Al Jazeera.
"We are not demanding an overthrow of the government, nor are we asking for mid-term elections. All we are asking is for Mr Zardari to fulfil the promises he made to restore the judges."
Other opposition leaders, including Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Jamat-e-Islami, a religious party that has supported the lawyers protest, and Imran Khan, the former cricketer turned politician, have also been placed under house arrest.
Party officials said that police had been deployed outside the homes of both leaders in Lahore, but that they had managed to slip out and were on their way to Islamabad.
Government crackdown
Zardari's government has been keen to stifle the protests, arresting scores of people across the country and prompting outrage for civil society leaders.
"I think there is an air of madness in the presidency, if I may say so," Asma Jahangir, the chairperson of the Pakistan human rights commission, told Al Jazeera.
"The kind of outrageous attacks not only on political leadership but on political workers, and the miss-handling of women that we have seen, including in civil society, is just outrageous."
Ishtiaq Ahmad, a professor of international relations at Islamabad's Qadi Azam university, said that Zardari was resisting reinstating the judges for fear they might revoke his protection from corruption charges.
"The return of Benazir Bhutto [Zardair's late wife] and Zardari to Pakistan took place under a deal with Mushrraf in 2007. As part of the deal all the corruption charges, through a special presidential ordinance called 'NRO' [National Reconciliation Ordinance], were removed, against Zardari especially," he told Al Jazeera.
"The NRO remains, but the fear of the Zardari led regime is if they restore chief justice Chaudhry, given his assertive background, the NRO might be revoked and then obviously all those charges come back to haunt Zardari and other party leaders."
Political tensions have risen in Pakistan in recent weeks, after supreme court last month banned Sharif, one of the country's most popular political figures, along with his brother, from holding elected office.
The government vowed on Saturday to review the court ruling, but officials in Sharif's party dismissed the government's announcement and said they long march would continue.
PHOTO CAPTION
File photo of opposition leader and former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad.
Al-Jazeera
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