Once hailed as heroes, Pakistani lawyers now seen as ‘gangsters’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/once-hailed-as-heroes-pakistani-lawyers-now-seen-as-gangsters/2012/11/11/bccbf3a2-2c26-11e2-a99d-5c4203af7b7a_story.html?hpid=z5

LAHORE, Pakistan — The young police inspector came to court to present evidence in a beating case. He left with his head and lip bloodied and his uniform torn — assaulted, he said, by a gang of black-suited assailants.

The notorious lawyers of Lahore had struck again, police and witnesses said. It was chalked up as yet another episode of violence by lawyers that has become common here in this seat of justice in eastern Pakistan, where cases from throughout Punjab province are heard

In a nation where the rule of law is already fragile on many levels, police officials, judges, litigants and witnesses say they have become increasingly fearful of marauding lawyers in their trademark black pants, coats and ties.

“If police officers don’t submit to their pressure, they abuse and beat them,” said Sadaqat Ullah, the 28-year-old police investigator who alleged that a group of lawyers pummeled him in late September because he refused to share a confidential hospital report with an attorney in the original assault case. “They behave like gangsters.”

i'm confused, who's running what, are they saying there is no law structure that is respected, and this place has nukes? 

In a country where militants rule large swaths of territory, corruption is endemic and people are “disappeared” by security agencies, the “black coats” emerged as defenders of the rule of law after then-President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution, arrested political foes and fired judges.

The world beheld incongruous images of men in suits braving police lines and tear gas in the capital, Islamabad, to demand the reinstatement of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.

this it would seem would really if not already known be a serious point of consequence in 2014, and if so why are we not hearing the right wing try to draw attention to it?