Sharif family meets Nawaz at Kot Lakhpat jail

LAHORE: The family of deposed prime minister, Nawaz Sharif met him at the Kot Lakhpat Jail on Thursday (today), ARY News reported.

Nawaz’s mother, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and other family members including Hamza Shehbaz visited the ex-premier at the jail amid tight security.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo was jailed on December 24 after being taken into custody by police following an accountability court judgement in Al-Azizia reference case.

Accountability court judge Muhammad Arshad Malik sentenced Sharif to seven years in prison and ordered him to pay $25million and Rs1.5 billion in the Al-Azizia case.

The former premier was arrested by a National Accountability Bureau team soon after the verdict was announced. He was supposed to be moved to Rawalpindi’s Adiala prison but was transferred to Lahore after his counsel requested the court to move him to the city on medical grounds.

The judge on Dec 21 rejected an application by Sharif’s lawyer Khawaja Haris to defer the judgment.

Sharif, 67, resigned in July 2017 after the Supreme Court disqualified him from holding office over an undeclared source of income.

He served as prime minister twice in the 1990s before he himself was ousted in a 1999 coup leading to a decade of exile. He won a third term as prime minister in a 2013 election.

Last year on July 6, 2018, an accountability court sentenced Nawaz Sharif to a total of 10 years in prison and directed him to pay a fine of £8 million after finding him guilty on different charges in the Avenfield properties case.

The Avenfield reference is among four corruption references filed against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his three children and former finance minister Ishaq Dar in compliance with the July 2017 Supreme Court verdict in the Panama Papers case.