Shehbaz’s govt in Pak gives Nawaz passport
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been issued a passport to return to his home country from the United Kingdom where he was seeking treatment for multiple diseases, a media report said on Monday. Nawaz is the elder brother of newly elected Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif.
The 72-year-old three-time Pakistan premier, against whom several corruption cases were launched by the government of former PM Imran Khan, in November, 2019 left for London after the Lahore high court granted him a four-week permission to go abroad for treatment.
The Express Tribune newspaper reported that Nawaz was issued the passport on April 23 with a 10-year validity by the new government headed by his younger brother.
The nature of the passport is “ordinary” and it was made in the “urgent” category, Geo News reported. Nawaz, who is the Pakistan Muslim League-nawaz (PML-N) supremo, last week met Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-zardari in London and discussed the “overall political situation” in Pakistan and vowed to work together on issues pertaining to politics and national interest.
The PPP and the PML-N — the two main political parties — have been alternatively in power when the military was not ruling the country. The powerful army has ruled the coup-prone country for more than half of its 75-plus years of existence.
Sharif, before flying to the UK in 2019, have an undertaking to the Lahore HC to return to Pakistan, citing his record to face the process of law and justice within four weeks or as soon as he is declared healthy and fit to travel by doctors. He was also given bail in the Al-azizia Mills corruption case in which he was serving seven-year imprisonment in Lahore’s high-security Kot Lakhpat jail.