Court indicts Nawaz in corruption references afresh

ISLAMABAD – Dismissing his plea for clubbing the corruption references together, Islamabad Accountability Court charge-sheeted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif afresh in the three cases.

Talking to media after appearing before the court , Nawaz Sharif come up with a scathing criticism on judiciary terming it biased and vindictive toward him.

Referring to the detailed judgement on his review petition, he said he was already expecting such decision. He said the judges’ vendetta and bias was oozing out of each and every word of the verdict, which would go down as darkest decision in the history of judiciary that was replete with such dark judgments.

Earlier, Accountability Court judge Mohammad Bashir rejected former prime minister’s plea of merging the cases. He then called Nawaz on rostrum and indicted him in all three corruption references one by one.

The court had reserved its ruling on Nawaz Sharif’s application on Tuesday after hearing arguments from both the defence counsel and the NAB prosecution.

After hearing the charge-sheet, the PML-N president pleaded ‘not guilty’. Indulging in a dialogue with the judge, he said he was being denied fair trial.

Pointing out that the apex court had given a deadline of six months for all the [four] corruption cases, he questioned how the court would do justice when each case has to be decided in one and a half months.

The judge replied that the trial could be completed in the given timeframe by hearing all the cases simultaneously.

After the indictment, the court revived summons for the prosecution witnesses — Sidra Mansoor of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and Jahangir Ahmed of Federal Board of Revenue — for their presence in the next hearing, on November 15.

After getting charge-sheeted, Nawaz Sharif left the court along with his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Capt(r) Safdar.

Few weeks ago, the ousted PM was charge-sheeted in these cases through his representative Zafir Khan Tareen but he challenged the decision of running three separate cases against him by the same accountability court , in the Islamabad High Court – which referred his plea back to the trial court .

This time, since he himself appeared in the court , the charges were read out to him in person by the judge.

As usual Nawaz Sharif, along with his daughter and son-in-law, came to the Accountability Court in a heavy cavalcade amid tight security. Some of the federal cabinet members and senior party leaders received him at the court compound.

The ousted PM drove back from Murree to Punjab House early morning and then from Punjab House he came to the court .

During the court proceedings, Nawaz Sharif sat in the courtroom quietly. He appeared calm and read newspapers most of the time, but on some occasions looked tense.

After the hearing, he was quite aggressive and came out hard-hitting on superior judiciary using derogatory words against the institution, which according to him had played in the hands of dictators and invented the doctrine of necessity.

He said that the tone and tenor of the detailed judgement of his review petition smacked of judges bias and vendetta, and this ‘darkest judgement’ would go down in history in same way. He further said that the judgement was not surprising for him as he did not expect any good from ‘these judges’.

Maryam’s Calibri plea accepted

The accountability court on Wednesday also heard Maryam’s plea filed against accusing her of high Calibri forgery, and accepted it.

The court had on Oct 19 indicted Maryam and Safdar in the Avenfield reference related to London properties. Besides other charges, the court also charged Maryam with signing a document in Calibri font in February 2006 when that font did not exist.

The application filed by Maryam pointed out that “as per mandatory provision envisage by Section 30 of the NAO 1999, the cognizance of an offence of false evidence committed in the course of the investigation or trial is to be taken upon pronouncement of judgement”.

The court decided to delete Section 3(a) of National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 dealing with forgery from the charges against the couple.

The charge however could be reinstated in case the prosecution comes up with solid evidence against the accused related to forgery.

The NAB prosecutor, afterwards, announced to prove the allegations during trial.

Source: The Nation