Islamabad: For the first time since his return from London after four years of self-exile, former premier Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday appeared a local court in connection with the corruption cases against him.
Sharif, 73, the three-time prime minister and supremo of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), returned to Pakistan on Saturday.
The court cases are set to resume which were stopped due to his absence.
Sharif marked his attendance in the Islamabad-based Accountability Court of Judge Muhammad Bashir, who had suspended his arrest orders in the Toshakhana case to facilitate his return to Pakistan after four years.
The attendance was important to show that he has surrendered before the court. He was allowed to go away after the judge witnessed his presence in the courtroom.
Bashir is the same judge who convicted him in the Avenfield case. The court had suspended Sharif’s arrest warrant until Tuesday.
Pakistan People’s Party Co-chairman Asif Zardari and former premier Yusuf Raza Gilani are also co-accused in the case.
Later, Sharif is scheduled to appear before the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in relation to the Avenfield and Al-Azizia cases. The court had granted him protective bail until Tuesday. He had also moved the high court seeking revival of his petitions against conviction.
Earlier today, Sharif’s counsel Qazi Misbah in the Toshakhana case filed three different applications in the accountability court, which include the restoration of the PML-N supremo’s annexed property in the case; appointment of Sharif’s pleader in the case; and an application to submit the politician’s bail bonds.
Sharif was disqualified in 2017 and later in 2018 convicted in the two cases of corruption. He has always denied allegations of any wrongdoing and termed his conviction orchestrated by the powerful establishment in collusion with the judiciary.
Sharif was convicted in July 2018 by an accountability court in the Avenfield properties case and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He was arrested and put in jail but set free after being given bail while his appeals against acquittal in the case were pending. He was on bail when he left for the UK in 2019 on medical grounds.
His daughter Maryam Nawaz was also sentenced to seven years in jail in the case but was acquitted in September 2022 along with her husband Muhammad Safdar.
In Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption and Sharif was sentenced to seven years in jail in December 2018.
The IHC declared him a proclaimed offender in both cases in December 2020.
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