Nawaz Sharif petitions High Court to revive appeals against his conviction in Avenfield and Al-Azizia cases

Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday filed petitions in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to revive appeals against his conviction in the Avenfield and Al-Azizia cases, two days after he returned to the country from the UK after four years of self-imposed exile. Sharif, 73, the three-time prime minister and supremo of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), returned to Pakistan on Saturday. Former law minister Azam Tarar and advocate Amjad Parvez filed petitions on behalf of Sharif in the IHC which on October 19 had granted him protective bail in both cases until October 24 to let him come back in the court without any fear of arrest. 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. He was also convicted in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption and sentenced to seven years in jail in December 2018. He was allowed to go to London in November 2019 on medical grounds and he returned about four years later on Saturday. The IHC declared him a proclaimed offender in both cases in December 2020. In his petitions, Sharif pleaded that the appeals against his conviction should be reinstated and decided on merit according to law. He is likely to be heard on Tuesday by an IHC division bench. Earlier, upon his return, he had landed at the Islamabad airport first to sign applications for restoring pending appeals against his convictions in the Avenfield Apartments and Al-Azizia cases. It was a token of his compliance to the court. On July 6, 2018, a few days before the general elections, accountability court judge Muhammad Bashir convicted Sharif, his daughter Maryam and her husband in the Avenfield Apartments case that was investigated by a six-member joint investigation team formed to look into the Panama Papers revelations. While an Islamabad High Court division bench virtually cleared Sharif in the Avenfield apartments case, calling the accountability court’s decision “not correct, Sharif’s absconder status meant that he was not exonerated despite the court observing a lack of substantial evidence against him.