Pakistan’s highest court indicted Prime Minister for contempt on Monday, pleading not guilty to charges that could see him jailed for six months and disqualified from office

Pakistan's highest court indicted Prime Minister for contempt on Monday, pleading not guilty to charges that could see him jailed for six months and disqualified from office.
  
Summoned over the government's two-year refusal to write to authorities in Switzerland asking them to re-open corruption cases against the president, Yousuf Raza Gilani is Pakistan's first premier ever to be charged in office.
 
A long-running standoff between the government and the judiciary has fanned political instability in the turbulent country.
  
President Asif Ali Zardari and his late wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto, were suspected of using Swiss bank accounts to launder about $12 million in alleged bribes paid by companies seeking customs inspection contracts in Pakistan in the 1990s.
  
The prime minister has always insisted that Zardari is immune from prosecution as president and says the cases are politically motivated.
  
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television at the weekend, he said if convicted, he would lose his seat in parliament and would automatically be removed as prime minister. "Certainly then there is no need to step down if I am convicted, I am not supposed to be even the member of the parliament," he said.