126 days: where, when and what happened in PanamaLeaks case

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) reserved judgment in PanamaLeaks case on Thursday. All eyes are on the apex court now which took more than 126 days to conclude the landmark case.

The country’s top legal brains consumed 94 precious hours to wind up their arguments in 35 hearings. The judgment into this case will most likely be announced nextmonth. Up to 26 hearings were conducted by a bench headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, from January 4, 2017 onwards, and nine hearings by the bench headed by then Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali from October 19, 2016 to December 9, 2016.

Both parties’ counsels have cited references of more than 300 cases. They have read about three dozen excerpts from judicial decisions of more than two dozen different countries—USA, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Bangladesh, New Zealand and European Countries, in particular.

Voluminous materials consisting of more than 6,000 pages have been presented before the country’s top court so far from all parties. Six books have also been submitted to the court as references and case studies. More than 250 questions were asked by the judges and the petitioners in this case. Going through the chronology of events, one of worthy judges observed: “It seems a blind man is trying to find a black cat in a dark room which is perhaps not there.”

Judges raised questions about 1000s of unverified documents came from parties & law of evidence, acknowledging importance of ‘Sadiq’ and ‘Ameen’. Top lead legal brains say, “fate of many including the Prime Minister hangs in balance in this case.”

Salman Akram Raja, counsel for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s sons, produced a plethora of documents including another Qatari letter, different business agreements, some evidentiary documents of money trail, agreements of property invoices of charges billed as fees of Minerva, witness statements of Shezi Nackvi and a couple of new affidavits of Tariq Shafi, and many others. Raja also answered eight striking questions of judges, and provided further details sought by the apex court bench. Nescol and Nielson remained in focus.

“Both sides are dealing with possibility and speculation as far as the events of the 70s and 80s are concerned and therefore the court can’t decide that someone is guilty. There can only be speculation that the PM had a role to play in anything related to the flats and not Mian Sharif. My whole point is that the court can’t decide on speculation. Also there is a difference between narration of facts and arguments built on the facts. The narration of facts and questions about what and why a dead man did is speculation and I described it as such,” Salman Akram Raja said.

During the course of months-long arguments, judges and petitioners’ lawyers have posed more than 250 questions to the respondents. It was Justice Azmat Saeed who posed more than 70 striking questions in this case.

Justice Khosa raised more than 55 questions while Justice Ejaz Afzal put over 35 questions to both parties. The remaining questions came from the lawyers as well as Justices Ijaz-ul-Ahsan and Gulzar Ahmed.

The petitioners’ counsels, including Sheikh Rashid of Awami Muslim League and Tariq Asad in persons, consumed over 48 hours of the Apex Court while the defence counsels took 46 hours to conclude their arguments.

Lawyers for the FBR and NAB have argued for a combined three hours, while the Attorney General has taken 4.5 hours so far. The SC’s judges angrily grilled the NAB chairman, who refused to file appeal to reopen Hudaibiya Paper mills reference case. The bench led by Justice Khosa heard both parties for 72 long hours, while former Chief Justice Jamali led-bench heard parties for some 22 hours.

Makhdoom Ali Khan, counsel for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, argued for a week i.e. 17 long hours. He cited 152 cases including judicial precedent from 18 different countries’ courts. Mr Makhdoom also had some beautiful quotes from Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Keats, George Bernard Shaw and Shelley. When he concluded his arguments Justice Khosa observed: “Thank you very much for your valuable arguments.” He was perhaps the only lawyer whose arguments were well-articulated. Even Imran Khan of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf praised his style of presenting arguments before the judges.

Naeem Bokhari, lead counsel for PTI, consumed more 1?7  hours to wind up his arguments. He had also led the team with his colleague Hamid Khan before Chief Justice Jamali’s bench in Courtroom No1. On conclusion of Mr Bokhari’s arguments, judges remarked: “Thank you Bokhari Sahib for assisting us.”

More than three dozen parliamentarians have been witnessing the entire proceedings every day. The Jamaat-e-Islami legal team’s head Taufiq Asif took more than six and a half long hours of the apex court to build his arguments but judges apparently did not buy them. As he concluded his arguments, one of judges said: “Thank you for your effort to assist the court.”

Then it was Shahid Hamid who spent nine long hours to plead his clients’ case where he gave references of a dozen cases by quoting from a famous poem of English poet John Donne.

PTI chairman Imran Khan attended 32 proceedings of this case where he spent 93 hours in the courtroom. MNAs Jahangir Tareen attended the court for 87 hours, Shah Mahmood Qureshi for 62 hours and Sheikh Rashid witnessed 31 proceedings where he remained for some 82 hours. Siraj-ul-Haq of Jamaat-e-Islami spent 76 hours in the court while he attended 26 hearings. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif spent 6 hours in the court while Railways Affairs Minister remained for 13 hours in the courtroom. Two female cabinet members of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz—State Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb and State Minister for Science and Information Technology Anusha Rahman witnessed almost 25 hearings each where both ladies remained for 59 long hours. The Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Law and Justice, Zafarullah Khan, regularly attended the proceedings. He has spent some 77 hours in the court.

PML-N lawmakers Talal Chaudhry, Daniyal Aziz, and Maiza Hameed have each attended 26 hearings and spent more than 56 hours each in the court.

Judges and lawyers read Premier Sharif’s speeches some 111 times while popular Qatari Letters and names of three Qatari Princes were mentioned 121 times by judges and counsels on the rostrum. The petitioners and the respondents focused on Articles 10A, 19A, 62 62(1) (e-f), 63, 66, 69, 184(3), 185, 187, 224, 248, etc. of the 1973 Constitution.

The Prime Minister’s counsel focused on Article 66 which gives ‘absolute privilege’ to a Member of Parliament to express his views on the floor of the House. Informative interviews of senior journalists like Shahzeb Khanzada, Hamid Mir, Sohail Warriach, Rauf Klasra, Javed Chaudhry, Umer Cheema, Asma Sherazi and Sana Bucha were also quoted by judges and petitioners during the course of proceedings.

There seemed to be three danger zones for the defence counsel i.e. ‘establishing money trail’ for Hussain and Hassan Nawaz, the ownership of the Mayfair Flats, and dependency of Maryam Nawaz Sharif.’ There seemed to be five danger zones for the defence counsel i.e. ‘establishing money trail’ for Hussain and Hassan Nawaz, the ownership of the Mayfair flats, dependency of Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the Hudaibiya paper mills case, and proving that the prime minister is not truthful and righteous as per the Constitution’s Article 62 and 63. Attorney General of Pakistan Aushtar Ausaf Ali also assisted the court where he argued for four hours that ‘how can the SC deal with plethora of allegations leveled by the petitioners.’

The Federal government also spent around an estimated Rs17 million to deploy additional police personnel on security of the apex court and VVIPs who attended the proceedings in past three months in Red zone of Islamabad.

Sheikh Rashid appeared before the bench in-person in this case. He argued for around 3 hours in support of his stance, citing references of around 29 cases. Tariq Asad Advocate, who is another party in this case, argued for about an hour in this case but his petition was de-linked to be heard later.

Hamid Khan, counsel for PTI, argued for 6 hours before CJ Jamali’s bench where Naeem Bokhari assisted him in November-December last year. Then it was Salman Aslam Butt, counsel for PM Sharif, also assisted CJ Jamali’s bench for four and half hours where he cited references of seven cases. Akram Sheikh, counsel for Hussain and Hassan Nawaz, argued for 30 minutes where he only produced first Qatari Letter only. The petitions of Barrister Zafarullah Khan were dismissed on various grounds at early stage of this case.