the lawyer for suspended former Pakistan captain Salman Butt on Saturday lashed out at a top cricket official who said he would be "disappointed" if players in a spot-fixing case were acquitted.
Butt is facing an International Cricket Council (ICC) tribunal along with pace bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer over allegations of spot-fixing in the series against England earlier this year.
ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat told the BBC he was confident of the case against the players.
"We need to send out a strong message and that is part of what we want to achieve," Lorgat said.
"We've worked hard at collecting all the evidence that we would require to make the charges stand. I am confident that our guys have worked very hard in ensuring they have got a case they can present which should stand the test of scrutiny."
The ICC provisionally suspended the three players in September following reports in British tabloid News of the World which claimed Pakistani players, including the suspended trio, took money to carry out orders from a bookmaker at specific stages in the Lord's Test in August.
Butt and Aamer lost their appeals against the suspension last month, while Asif withdrew after initially deciding to challenge the sanction.
The ICC tribunal, led by code of conduct commissioner Michael Beloff, will hear the case in Doha, Qatar from January 6 to 11. The two other members are Sharad Rao and Albie Sachs.
Butt's lawyer Khalid Ranjha said Lorgat's comments were a "threat to the tribunal."
"What Lorgat has said is tantamount to threatening the prospective tribunal," Ranjha, a former Pakistani law minister, told AFP from Lahore.
"The ICC wants the judges to give a decision on dotted lines and this is not a good example set by the ICC official."
Ranjha, who also represented Butt in his unsuccessful appeal hearing, said he believed ICC was trying to pressure the players into boycotting the tribunal.
The fixing scandal deepened on Wednesday when Pakistani television station Geo broadcast footage apparently showing bookmaker Mazhar Majeed implicating another four Pakistan players during the England tour.
