Musharraf arrested at Islamabad home Former Pakistani ruler Pervez Musharraf has been formally placed under house arrest in his expansive Islamabad farmhouse, a day after he fled an Islamabad courtroom to avoid detention in one of several criminal cases against him. Escorted by national police and his own phalanx of heavily-armed security guards, Mr Musharraf appeared before a judicial magistrate early on Friday morning and submitted himself for his arrest, which the Islamabad High Court had ordered a day earlier. IN Pakistan Pakistani TV showed the former army chief dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and looking stony-faced as he was escorted inside the courtroom. The court ordered Mr Musharraf confined to his residence in an upmarket neighbourhood until a Monday hearing which will decide whether he will remain at home, or be taken into custody. Islamabad police and senior members of his political party said Mr Musharraf submitted himself voluntarily, after visits on Thursday from senior police officials, who had urged him to co-operate with the legal proceedings. "Ultimately, they were able to convince him that he had to present himself for arrest first before further proceedings can take place," a senior police officer said. He couldn't simply be an absconder. However, others said the police effectively arrested him at home, then brought the former leader to court. Mr Musharraf's lawyers said they were planning to appeal to the Supreme Court later on Friday to end his confinement. After more than four years in self-imposed exile Mr Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan for nine years after seizing power in a military coup, returned to the country last month hoping to run in next month's parliamentary elections and return to public life. Instead, the former army chief has been deemed an unfit candidate to contest the elections and has found himself entangled in an ever-tightening legal net in connection with alleged abuses of power during his rule. The latest twist in the drama began on Thursday morning, when a judge unexpectedly revoked the former president's bail and ordered his immediate arrest, in a case connected to the detention of senior judges in 2007 after Mr Musharraf had declared a state of nationwide emergency. After the court gave its order Mr Musharraf, protected by his government-provided paramilitary guards, brushed past local police, hurried out of the courtroom and sped back home in a black SUV, with a guard hanging off the side. Mr Musharraf's flight presented a new headache to the government of president Asif Ali Zardari, caught between the order of an independent court and the sensitivities of an army that might resist seeing its former chief humiliated. In overnight meetings, the government decided that Mr Musharraf will be "simply confined to his home and left there for now," a senior government official told the Financial Times. Mr Musharraf, once a staunch US ally in the war on terror, faces a number of criminal cases for alleged abuses of power during his tenure, including allegations of involvement in the death of a tribal leader, and in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. He has also been charged with treason.