AP

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani waves upon his arrival at the Supreme court in Islamabad.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was on Monday indicted for contempt in the country's highest court, a move that could disqualify him from office, state media reported.

The embattled prime minister was summoned by the courts over the government's two-year refusal to write to authorities in Switzerland asking them to re-open corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.

If convicted, Gilani faces six months in jail and disqualification from office in a case that has fanned political instability and may force early elections in a country already troubled by al-Qaeda and Taliban violence.

Zardari and his late wife, prime minister 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.

Pakistani state TV said Gilani had been indicted, just minutes after the hearing got under way in the heavily secured “Red Zone” of Islamabad. The prime minister pleaded not guilty, the television report said.

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 the 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.

Security was razor-tight for Monday's hearing, with hundreds of riot police guarding the Supreme Court and queues trailing back from check points where police searched vehicles in the “Red Zone” of government buildings.

Helicopters hovered as Gilani arrived at the imposing court building, dressed in a dark suit and grey tie, where he waved from the steps before being escorted inside to the court room.

The Pakistani court overturned in December 2009 a two-year political amnesty that had frozen investigations into Zardari and other politicians.

The Swiss separately shelved the cases in 2008, when Zardari became head of state, and a prosecutor in Switzerland has said it will be impossible to re-open them as long as he remains president and is immune from prosecution.

Members of the government accuse judges of over-stepping their reach and of trying to bring down the prime minister and president, a year before the administration would become the first in Pakistan to complete an elected term.

The president, who is so tainted by corruption allegations that his nickname is “Mr 10 Percent”, has already spent 11 years in jail in Pakistan on charges ranging from corruption to murder although he was never convicted. - AFP