Recalling the incidents that led to the Oct 12 1999 military coup, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz supremo and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said he was asked by a few generals to sign orders dissolving the National Assembly. But he refused and said: "Over my dead body! I won't sign order of dissolving the NA."
In a video widely-circulated on social media on the anniversary of the coup, Nawaz narrates how he was forced to sign orders of dissolving the lower house of the Parliament.
"I was forcefully made to sit in the back seat of a Honda car with a security guard [and another person].Shehbaz Sharif was also in the same car, probably on the front seat," said Nawaz in the video.
He recalled the incident and said he was taken to a mess, while Shehbaz was taken somewhere else.
"At around 2 am General Mahmood Ahmed with General Ali Jan Orakzai and another general came to me. They brought an order of dissolution of the National Assembly and asked me to sign it," said the former prime minister.
Nawaz recalled the contents of the letter which said the prime minister was voluntarily dissolving the assembly and advising the president to do so.
"I have asked them why did you bring this order to me," Nawaz recalled asking the generals.
"They told me to sign it and consider myself free. Otherwise I had to bear consequences of not signing the order," he said in the video, adding they were talking in arrogance.
"I told them I never thought of dissolution of the assembly," he said. Dismissing his refusal, the generals told Nawaz that he had to sign the papers.
"I told them over my dead body."
"Those were my exact words: "Over my dead body! I will not sign this paper"."
General Pervaiz Musharraf who was serving as the chief of army staff took control of the country and declared martial law on October 12, 1999.
General Mahmood Ahmed, who is 77 years old now, was instantly appointed as chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence after the coup. He served as DG ISI till March 2001.
General Ali Jan Orakzai, who is now 74 years old, was appointed governor of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, which was then NWFP.
Following the sharing of this video #Overmydeadbody became a top trend on Twitter. People used the hashtag to share their thoughts on the video.
Many users named Oct 12 a black day. A user tweeted: "Our country was broken by this martial law but we did not learn a lesson."
Users widely lauded Nawaz Sharif's courage.
Users also compared Nawaz, a civilian leader, and Musharraf, a military dictator.
