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Chinese soldiers march past the Great Hall of the People after a pre-opening session of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, on March 4, 2013 in Beijing, China.

BEIJING — The call came late on Monday night.

"More than 70 police raided our (guest house)," said former policeman He Zuhua. "Police are everywhere."

His voice shook and he soon hung up, fearing that authorities would trace the call to the public telephone on the capital’s ragged outskirts. NBC News has been unable to reach him since.

He says he and a handful of former police officers are being pursued and detained by authorities after traveling to the capital to help shine a light on corruption within their ranks. The officers have joined droves of unhappy citizens who annually converge on Beijing in the hopes of petitioning their leaders for help during the annual National People's Congress which started Monday. Each spring scores of petitioners are pulled from buses, trains, sidewalks, and simple hotels and locked up in secret locations, known as "black jails."

The police stand out because all were once part of the justice system they seek to reform. According to two members of the group of 14 hoping to press for change, all of them are former police officers claiming to be themselves victims of pervasive corruption. 

Their plight underscores how hard it is to combat patronage and graft in China, and how easy it was for insiders to fall from grace, said Hu Xingdou, a professor at Beijing Institute of Technology.

"In a country that lacks legal protection, it is not safe for anyone," he said. "In China the judiciary, which is the base of anti-corruption, is not just."

"Anyone can fall into a disadvantaged group from an advantaged group," he added.

The crackdown on police petitioners came after China’s new leader Xi Jinping declared war on corruption, staking his name to promises that he would root out graft that infests everything from kindergarten admissions to the highest levels of government. He has called for anti-corruption campaigns ranging from banning luxury banquets to prohibiting floral displays and red carpet treatment for the official delegations.

According to He, he and the other former police officers from around the country were first rounded up on Feb. 24 as they ate together in a restaurant in Beijing. After 24 hours, three of the petitioners were taken from the detention facility with officials from their home provinces, He said. The rest "escaped," he said.

"Corruption in the judicial system is the cause of all corruption," he said before the Feb. 24 incident. "If we cannot change this, then China will collapse."

Police officials contacted by NBC News denied any knowledge of a raid involving former officers.

He says he had worked in a county investigation unit in China’s central Henan province until 2002 when he refused to give false evidence in a trial involving local officials. He was sentenced to a year in prison on charges of corruption, He says.

Senior officials in Henan told him that his case lacked the proper evidence and promised a new investigation, He says. A decade after He lost his job and nothing had been done about the case.

Both of the police officers NBC News interviewed said they had traveled to Beijing to protest corruption within the judicial system, and hoped to present an open letter asking the delegates of the NPC to address the issue.

The NPC, made up of nearly 3,000 candidates is vested with lawmaking powers. In reality, it has acted mainly as a rubber stamp for the ruling Communist Party decisions. Over time, however, votes on measures or candidates nominated by the party have stopped being unanimous, signaling growing diversity if not the emergence of an opposition. Petitioners come from all over the country seeking redress for wrongs.

Tian Lan says she was once an award-winning senior police officer. After exposing a corruption scandal among local police in Northern Hebei province in 2002, Tian says she was jailed and tortured for a year. A Guangping court in Hebei charged Tian with six crimes including passing on states secrets, but the court failed to present evidence.

Since then Tian says she has been a petitioner. She says that to prevent her from petitioning, the local government has refused to renew her national identity card, which she needs to apply for a new job. Sometimes Tian has had to beg for food, she says.

"If people like me, who are inside the system, are mistreated like this, can you imagine how average citizens are treated?" Tian asked in tears.

Tian and He are not unique.

In the vast central city of Chonqqing, over 1,000 policemen, were recently given back their jobs as redress for mistreatment suffered at the hands of notoriously heavy-handed deposed police chief Wang Lijun. Wang has since been charged with crimes of abuse power for his role in a scandal that brought down charismatic Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai.

Before their arrest Tian and He told NBC they knew they might be detained before their demonstration.

"We are not here out of personal interest, but to fight against this nation’s corruption," said He. "This country must change."

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Former Haitian Dictator Jean Claude "Baby-Doc" Duvalier, center, listens as charges against him are announced during an appeals court hearing in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. Duvalier appeared in court on Thursday for the first time to face charges he was responsible for corruption and serious human rights violations during his 15-year rule.

Individual government officials "had their own authority," the 61-year-old Duvalier said when asked about his role as head of state from 1971 to 1986. "Under my authority, children could go to school, there was no insecurity."

Duvalier, who had boycotted three previous court hearings, struck a mostly defiant tone during a four-hour grilling by a panel of three judges in a packed and sweltering courtroom.

Duvalier, dressed in a navy-blue suit and tie, slipped into the courthouse unescorted early on Thursday, arriving in his own car several hours before the hearing started accompanied by his longtime companion Veronique Roy. 

'Long live Duvalier'
Hundreds of Duvalier supporters gathered outside the courthouse soon after his arrival, some dancing and chanting "Long live Duvalier."

The pretrial Appeal Court hearing was held to determine what charges Duvalier may have to face. It is the first time he has personally been required to address crimes allegedly committed during his rule. 

International human rights observers are closely watching the case and consider it an important test of Haiti's weak justice system after decades of dictatorship, military rule and economic mayhem.

"Whatever happens next, Haitians will remember the image of their former dictator having to answer questions about the repression carried out under his rule," said Reed Brody, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch. 

During the hearing Duvalier was asked by the judges about more than a dozen of the most notorious cases involving alleged extra-judicial killings and detention of political prisoners.

'Calm, almost indifferent'
"He was asked tough questions and his answers were mostly evasive," said Amanda Klasing, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who attended the hearing.

"He was very calm, almost indifferent. His facial expression didn't change at all," she said.

Several alleged victims were in court and expressed satisfaction that he had finally appeared.

"He will have to face history in court, just like other dictators around the world are facing," said Alix Fils-Aime, who was imprisoned by Duvalier's government.

The hearing was adjourned in the afternoon and is set to resume next Thursday.

Reynold Georges, who heads Duvalier's legal team, had argued unsuccessfully at a hearing last week that his client's presence in court was not required.

Duvalier was briefly detained on charges of corruption, theft and misappropriation of funds after returning to the impoverished Caribbean nation in January 2011 following a 25-year exile in France. Those charges are still pending.

Separate charges of crimes against humanity filed by alleged victims of wrongful imprisonment, forced disappearances and torture under Duvalier, were set aside by a judge last year because the statute of limitations had run out. 

But the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, has warned Haitian authorities that there is no statute of limitations under international law for serious violations of human rights.

Return from exile
Critics say prosecutors have been too lenient in Duvalier's case. President Michel Martelly's government recently renewed Duvalier's diplomatic passport, saying he was entitled to it as a former head of state.

Duvalier, who inherited the title "President For Life" at the age of 19, is alleged to have fled Haiti with more than $100 million stashed in European bank accounts in 1986 after street demonstrations and riots broke out in a number of cities. 

His departure ended nearly three decades of dictatorship begun by his father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, in 1957. 

The Duvaliers enforced their rule with the aid of a feared militia, the National Security Volunteers, better known as the "Tonton Macoutes," who were blamed for hundreds of deaths and disappearances. 

Soon after he returned to Haiti in 2011, taking up residence in a villa in a posh suburb in the hills above the capital Port-au-Prince, Duvalier issued a brief apology "to those countrymen who rightly feel they were victims of my government," the first public recognition of abuses under his rule. 

While in exile, Duvalier acknowledged privately that killers in his government went unpunished, according to Bernard Diederich, a New Zealand-born journalist and author of several books on Haiti, including a biography of the younger Duvalier. 

"He always passed the blame to others," said Diederich, who conducted four long interviews with Duvalier in the late 1990s.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI cited failing health for his historic decision to step aside, but it is increasingly clear that the rich seam of scandal and strife running through the Vatican weighed heavily on his mind.

Allegations of corruption at the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church were "great challenges" for the pontiff, according to his brother who on Tuesday referred to them coyly as "irregularities."

Experts said only the appointment of a strong replacement willing to exert a tighter grip on its divided hierarchy would succeed in giving the church a clean break from its troubles.

"They are going to need a reformer who can bring management skills," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, S.J., author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church." "After all, it is often said that a good bishop needs to be like Jesus with an MBA."

The biggest headache for Pope Benedict XVI was the issue of alleged child sex abuse and the extent to which it had been ignored in some quarters of the church.

But it was the Vatileaks affair that fostered "perceptions of in-fighting, cover-ups and disarray," according to John Allen, Rome-based senior correspondent at the National Catholic Reporter.

Division between rival camps within the church hierarchy — on one side, the pope’s ally and Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, and on the other, state figures from previous papal regimes — motivated the illegal leaking of thousands of documents that portrayed Bertone in a poor light.

In October, the pope’s former butler Paolo Gabriele was given an 18-month prison sentence after being found guilty of stealing of the documents, which included some of Benedict’s private papers and letters alleging corruption within the church.

Letters and memos show that a senior Vatican figure, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, was removed from his post not long after blowing the whistle on nepotism and overpayments for goods and services that he said had wasted millions of dollars, including more than $500,000 on Christmas nativity figures.

Bertone was also accused of ousting the reformist head of the Institute for Works of Religion — the so-called ‘Vatican Bank’ – and, bizarrely, of being involved in a plot to smear the editor of a Catholic newspaper as a homosexual.

The litany of scandals that surfaced during Benedict’s papacy is a “long and not especially edifying list,” Allen said, although he added that some revelations had been exaggerated. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read about the Vatican in Italian newspapers.”

Vatican historians do not have to look far for evidence of similar problems. The 1984 payout of more than $200 million to creditors of Banco Ambrosiano was an acknowledgement of the role church funds had played in the collapsed bank’s dealings. The bank’s chairman, Robert Calvi, was a financial adviser to the Vatican. He was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.

“Like any other workplace, the Vatican needs to have in place a system that ensures there are no personal interests in awarding financial contracts and so on,” said Reese. “The problem is that the church has been its own auditor and policeman.”

“The last two popes have been academic characters, and academics are not the best at reforming organizations.”

Allen said: "The Vatican is going to need somebody who can act as a strong rudder, to bang heads together if necessary and to be seen as above the various factions. It's a very tough job."

Slideshow: The life of Pope Benedict XVI

Javier Barbancho / AFP - Getty Images

Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Look back at his life from childhood through his papacy.

Launch slideshow

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Tahir-ul Qadri, with white cap, greets Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, head of coaltion party Pakistan Muslim League Quaid on Thursday after successfully negotiating an end to the four-day Islamabad protest he ignited.

Seemingly overnight, the moderate Islamic cleric and Canadian émigré Tahir-ul Qadri, whose massive protest forced Pakistan’s government to agree to major concessions on Thursday, has risen from obscurity to become a force to be reckoned with in Pakistani politics.

Until this week, local TV anchors and headlines did not scream his name, as they do now. His face was not plastered on rickshaws and lampposts, nor on signs carried by the 50,000 people who followed him to a sit-in, camp-out, anti-government protest in the cold and rainy streets of Islamabad, where they remain, celebrating his negotiated agreement with government representatives.

But the 62-year-old Qadri landed squarely at the center of Pakistan's latest political crisis, which saw a population desperate for change and frustrated by leaders long-accused of corruption and ineptitude seize upon his message of free, fair elections and accountability at the highest levels.

Qadri, who only returned to his homeland in late 2012, had demanded the immediate dissolution of the current government and sweeping reforms to guarantee free and fair national elections, which are expected to be held this spring. He agreed to something less in Thursday's declaration, signed after hours-long, closed-door discussions with government representatives. The deal calls for the dissolution of the current government before March 16, with elections to take place within 90 days, and a pledge to enforce Pakistan's Constitution regarding the eligibility of political candidates. 

Despite denying having any political ambitions, Qadri made himself a part of the political process by stipulating in the declaration that meetings to discuss Pakistan's Election Commission make-up would be held at his office's headquarters and that his own political party -- the Pakistan Awami Tehreek -- would help select a caretaker prime minister. 

Lahore-based defense analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said that Qadri fell short of his aims.

"His assessment was that as he raises populist demands, other groups and parties will fall in line and he will become the undisputed and popular leader of Pakistan. This did not happen," Rizvi said. "However, the federal government in Islamabad has become hostage, because he has brought huge number of his followers to Islamabad, making it impossible for the government to take any action against him."

Still, for a country built on a feudal mentality, where political loyalties are handed down over generations like family heirlooms, Qadri’s accomplishments are no small feat.

So how did he do it? One former government official, who attended a Qadri rally this week, heard him address the crowd, and spoke to those in attendance, called that "the million dollar question."

"This chap .. he comes here and he holds a huge public meeting in Lahore, which is very well organized and very well-attended, and then this enormous march to Islamabad?" wondered the official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity. "How did this happen? Who's supporting him? It's a mystery to me." 

Professor C. Christine Fair, who teaches at Georgetown University and studies Pakistan, calls Qadri's sudden emergence on the national stage "theater,” and suspects the country’s powerful military helped to engineer the cleric’s return and organize his massive protest.

"If this came out of civil society, he'd be universally lauded,” she said. “The reason he's not is that a lot of people think he's got an invisible hand behind him. This isn't Pakistani civil society saying enough is enough. It's something else."

*********

For the last seven years, Qadri has by all accounts led a quiet life in Toronto, where he immigrated with his wife and children. But he'd made a name for himself in certain Pakistani circles much earlier. 

In the mid-1980s, early in the presidential tenure of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, the young Qadri was already a known quantity in the corridors of power.

According to a former government official, Qadri was one of a handful of Islamic scholars called in to present his views on how a proper Islamic state should function to Zia -- who came to power in 1977 in a military coup and launched the Islamization of Pakistan -- and his cabinet. Whether or not his input was used is unclear, but he left an impression -- that of a confident, moderate, articulate young scholar who was incredibly knowledgeable on Islam. 

His early political career in Pakistan, however, was brief and largely forgettable. He founded the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) political party in 1989, listing education as its top priority and promising to revive "the faith of the masses in politics, elections and the government." Qadri briefly held office as a member of parliament during the military dictatorship of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, from 2002 until he resigned in protest in 2004. One local report at the time quoted him as saying that Musharraf had reduced parliament's power to "a rubber stamp." 

"I don't feel that I should sit in such a powerless parliament which can be suspended with a single stroke of a general's pen," he told Pakistan's Daily Times at the time. 

But after leaving the political arena, Qadri succeeded in developing an international network and loyal following in religious and social circles. In 1981, he established an organization called Minaj-ul-Quran International (MQI), founded to promote "true Islamic teachings and philosophy" for those "dissatisfied with the existing religious institutions and organizations and their narrow-minded approach," according to the group's website. 

The MQI manifesto espouses, "Love, peace, harmony, universal brotherhood, justice, equity and prosperity," and boasts a registered membership of 280,000 worldwide. The organization claims to be operating in more than 90 countries, including operating 69 educational and cultural centers in Pakistan, and 600 schools educating 170,000 students across the country. A social welfare and disaster relief sister organization was added in 1989, which the website says has delivered aid to victims of "the Tsunami affecting Indonesia; the Bam earthquake, Iran; the South Asian earthquake in Pakistan, as well as various developments and educational projects in Pakistan and other underprivileged countries."

Pakistan's envoy to US faces potentially deadly blasphemy charge

After founding MQI, Qadri appears to have spent years trying to be heard and cultivating his public image. He wrote books (1,000 of them, according to his website, of which 43 have been published), delivered lectures (5,000 total, 1,500 of which are available for purchase on CD or DVD at MQI sale centers "around the world"). His message and achievements are cross-published and highlighted on multiple websites, including those of his Islamic organization, his political party and his personal site. 

But it wasn't until March 2010 that he strode onto the international stage. Qadri wrote and published a 500-page “fatwa,” or Islamic decree, "to place the Islamic stance on terrorism precisely in its proper perspective before the Western and Islamic worlds." The document, which is available for download in four different languages, lays out Quranic laws prohibiting terrorism and the killing of others in the name of Islam. At the time, nine years into the West's "War on Terror," his unequivocal language condemning terrorist acts set him apart from most Muslim scholars, and the world took note. His fatwa won praise from the U.S. State Department, drew international news coverage and made Qadri a sought-after speaker on the international circuit. 

In November 2010, he came to Washington, D.C., and delivered a lecture at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He spoke at the United States Institute of Peace that same month about the struggle against radicalism in Islam. He traveled to England and Australia to discuss terrorism and integration. But back in Pakistan -- where gas prices ballooned, power shortages proliferated and terrorism intensified -- Qadri remained a non-player. 

*********

But while he enjoyed success in his adopted country, Qadri's home country was in precipitous decline. 

The International Monetary Fund last year issued a dismal report on Pakistan's deteriorating economy, citing "deep seated and structural problems and weak macroeconomic policies" that have led to low GDP growth and a drain of foreign exchange reserves. Terrorist attacks have killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis and left the country teetering on the precipice of security chaos. A 2012 Gallup survey revealed President Asif Ali Zardari's performance ratings had plummeted and that 87 percent of Pakistanis believed the country was headed in the wrong direction. Power struggles between the military, judiciary and ruling government persisted, preventing legislators hell bent on maintaining their posts from turning their full attention to the nation's needs. 

Many thought the answer to the country's ills lay with former cricketer-turned-presidential-candidate Imran Khan. His self-proclaimed "tsunami" of supporters, inspired by his reputation as an outsider determined to change the system, set attendance records at his rallies, and gave Pakistan's notoriously rough-and-tumble journalists someone to cast as the political dark horse. But the candidate of change lost some of his shine in the Fall of 2012, when he began cherry-picking senior members of the same political parties he was criticizing for his leadership team. One senior adviser, Shireen Mazari, resigned from his party in protest in September. In her resignation letter, she accused Khan of trading his original ideals for “traditional ‘electables.’”

For a country seeking salvation, Qadri, free from the confines of political process, checks the boxes that others in the current cast of characters in Pakistani politics cannot. 

Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images

Supporters of Pakistani Muslim cleric Tahir-ul Qadri flash victory signs in Islamabad Thursday as they celebrate government concessions on upcoming elections.

"Who are the other people to be supported?" asked one former government official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. "They are maybe not as incompetent and corrupt (as the current government leaders), but they are very good runners-up."

Qadri's message, on the other hand, has been simple and consistent. 

He has demanded free, fair and transparent elections in a country where political patronage is often bought. He's demanded that political candidates meet the constitutional requirements for candidacy, such as paying their taxes. A recent investigation by Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema found that fewer than one-third of Pakistan's members of parliament file annual tax returns, including president Zardari. 

Rizvi says Qadri's support is borne of "widespread alienation" in Pakistan, and is in reaction to the poor performance by the federal and provincial governments. 

PhotoBlog: Declaring victory from behind bulletproof glass

But professor Fair believes Qadri's quick rise has all the hallmarks of Pakistan's powerful military, which has historically worked to influence policy and force political turnover -- both behind the scenes and through direct intervention. Though the military leadership has publicly taken a backseat during power struggles playing out before national elections, she believes it is privately pulling strings to prevent the same government officials from winning a majority, and to keep its hand in the game.

"They know that Pakistanis will not tolerate a direct military intervention. And this is (going to be) the second peaceful transition where parliament serves out its full term in Pakistan," Fair said of the military leaders. "Every time it happens, it makes it more difficult for the army to intervene. I don't think the intention is to overthrow the government -- it's to weaken the PPP (ruling party) before elections."

In an interview this week with NBC News, Qadri lambasted the current government as a "total failure," but insisted his goal was to reform, not topple it.

"We want to eradicate our political process and electoral process from might, money and manipulation," he said. "We want true democracy in place.”

He vehemently denied any support from Pakistan's military, or from external forces, as has been speculated in the local press, calling it "a false accusation," and "disinformation."

Now that he has the ear of the country and its leaders, it's unclear what Qadri will do next. 

Under the agreement signed Thursday, he has a role to play in the lead-up to elections. And while he insists he holds no political ambitions, that doesn't stop him from comparing himself to the elected-leader of the United States when asked what he stands for.

"I would say my slogan is like the slogan of Obama in America," he said. "He stood for change. If Americans accepted the slogan of change and voted for him, why not the same change? Democratically formed, the change in the corrupt system, why not the same change, democratically, peacefully should come in Pakistan?” 

NBC's Wajahat S. Khan and Fakhar Rehman in Islamabad, and Mushtaq Yousafzai in Peshawar, contributed to this report.

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