BLOW TO SHARIF AHEAD OF POLLS Former Pm given 10 years in jail over corruPtion, maryam 7 For abetment
An accountability court on Friday sentenced ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif to 10 years in prison over his family’s purchase of upscale London flats, in a major blow to his party ahead of a general election on July 25.
The guilty verdict in absentia against Sharif, 68, threatens to end the career of one of Pakistan’s most high-profile politicians of the last four decades, a political survivor who was prime minister three times.
A political ally said Sharif would return to Pakistan from London to file an appeal, facing arrest on arrival just before the election, in which his party is in a close race with opposition figure Imran Khan’s party.
“Today’s verdict shows that these Avenfield apartments were purchased using corruption money,” prosecution lawyer Sardar Muzaffar Abbasi told reporters, citing the name of the apartment building in London.
Sharif’s daughter, Maryam, widely seen as his chosen political heir, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Maryam’s husband and PML-N lawmaker Mohammed Safdar was sentenced to a year in prison, he said.
The conviction means Maryam will be disqualified from contesting a seat in the elections.
“The people of Pakistan and PMLN reject this decision,” said Sharif ’s brother Shahbaz, who took over as PML-N president after his brother was banned for life from holding office and is expected to be its prime ministerial candidate. “This decision is based on injustice.”
Both Sharif and his daughter were in London on Friday with Sharif’s wife, Kulsoom, who is being treated there for cancer and is in a coma after suffering a heart attack last month.
They both denied wrongdoing and will appeal the decision, Sharif ally Tariq Fazal Chaudhry said. He added that the former premier will return to Pakistan before the July 25 election.
The NAB court ordered Sharif to pay a fine of 8 million pounds and fined Maryam 2 million pounds, while ordering the confiscation of the London properties on
An activist of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz throws dirt and trash over himself while shouting slogans outside a court after the sentencing of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad on Friday.
behalf of the Pakistani government, Abbasi said.
If Sharif returns he will be arrested on arrival under the law, though he could later be freed by a separate court pending appeal, Abbasi added.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) court accused Sharif and his family of money laundering and being unable to legitimately show the money trail for the purchase of several luxurious properties in London, mostly in the mid-1990s.
Sharif was ousted by the Supreme Court in July 2017 and barred from politics for being “dishonest” by failing to report a monthly income of Dh10,000 from a company owned by his son. He denies drawing the
monthly salary. But he has kept de facto control of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party that he founded.
The decision against the Sharifs comes at a time of intensifying suspicion of military meddling in politics ahead of the polls, as well as media complaints that the press is being muzzled.
Sharif had denounced the court proceedings against him as politically motivated and a judicial witchhunt, often suggesting the hidden hand of the military was to blame.
“Justice has been massacred,” Maryam’s husband Safdar said after the verdict was announced.
The military, which has ruled the nuclear-armed country for almost half its history, denies involvement — AFP
in civilian politics. But the military ended Sharif ’s second stint in power in 1999 in a bloodless coup.
Sharif has a history of conflict with the military even though his political career was initially nurtured by military dictator Zia-ulHaq in the 1980s.
He fell out with powerful generals once he ascended to power a decade later, and their relations were fraught after Sharif returned as premier in 2013, partly because he challenged the military over control of foreign policy, which the generals have traditionally seen as their domain.
Sharif has argued that the military, in cahoots with top members of the judiciary, has used cases against him and party members to
tip the scales in favour of cricketerturned-politician Imran Khan in the run-up to the election.
Khan is running on a socially conservative, anti-corruption platform. He denies colluding with the military establishment and praises the disqualifications and prosecutions of PML-N figures as a longneeded crackdown on graft.
Khan was a driving force behind Sharif’s downfall, seizing on the 2016 Panama Papers’ revelations that the then-prime minister’s family had bought the London apartments using offshore companies.
The Supreme Court agreed to investigate the Sharif family’s finances after Khan threatened paralysing street demonstrations to protest graft. — Reuters