Reports reaching CEOAFRICA news desk is that Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has been released from house arrest and is free to move around the country.

According to source, this comes days after he was bailed over the 2007 army operation to oust militants from Islamabad's Red Mosque - the last legal case against him.

But the former general remains on a government exit control list and cannot leave the country, and it is not yet clear if he will leave the house because of threats to his life.

He faces murder trials over the assassination of former PM Benazir Bhutto and Baloch tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti. He has also been charged over his attempt to sack the higher judiciary in 2007 - he has been bailed in all three of those cases.

Separately, the Sharif government said in June that it planned to try him for treason - but a formal complaint in that case has still to be lodged.

Mr Musharraf's seven-month house arrest is said to be unprecedented in a country which has been ruled by the military for more than half of its history.

 His lawyer said Mr Musharraf had no intention of leaving Pakistan. He has consistently maintained that all the charges against him are politically motivated.

The operation ordered by Mr Musharraf on the besieged Red Mosque left a cleric and more than 100 others dead, and fuelled a deadly militant insurgency inside Pakistan which rages to this day.

Earlier this year, he returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile to fight elections - which were won by Nawaz Sharif, the man he ousted in his 1999 coup - but swiftly ran into trouble.

He was barred from running in the general election, and was placed under house arrest in April in the first of a series of cases relating to his time in power from 1999-2008.