Pakistan minister confirms Sharif will be arrested at Lahore airport

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will be arrested upon landing at Lahore airport today as he travels from London to appeal his conviction and face a 10-year jail sentence handed down by an anti-corruption court last week.

Sharif and his daughter Maryam, who was given a seven-year sentence by the same court, won’t be allowed to leave the airport, Information Minister Syed Ali Zafar said in broadcast comments.

“He is convicted, so he has to be arrested first and can’t be allowed to roam around in the city,” he said. “The National Accountability Bureau’s team and the Punjab Government have made arrangements to deal with the situation. It is their responsibility to maintain law and order,” the minister said talking to reporters at the Parliament House.

The dramatic return by Sharif before the July 25 national election follows a two-year corruption scandal that engulfed Pakistani politics after the leak of the so-called Panama Papers showed his family used offshore accounts to buy high-end London apartments. Regarding reservations of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and PML-N on the caretaker government set-up, Ali Zafar said under Article 19, each and every person had the right to freedom of speech. However, the interim government was all committed to deliver in larger national interest and continue serving the people of Pakistan with dedication, he said.

Sharif, the former premier, was disqualified from the top job by the Supreme Court last July, his third ousting since the 1990s. “Nawaz Sharif is coming back to fulfill his promise to the masses,” his younger brother Shehbaz said on Twitter. “He knows that he will be put behind bars.” Sharif maintains that the nation’s powerful military, which removed him in a 1999 coup, has conspired to manipulate the vote against his PML-N party in favour of his main political rival Imran Khan.