Hudaibiya judgment

The detailed judgment of a three-member Supreme Court bench on the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case, where Nawaz Sharif and his family were accused of laundering $1.2 billion, is a stinging rebuke of the investigation carried out by the National Accountability Bureau. The judgment says that the Sharif family were denied due process as the matter was kept pending in the courts indefinitely. By reopening the case, says the judgement, NAB was seeking only to oppress the Sharifs. The judges had equally harsh words for the Joint Investigation Team which looked into the case, pointing out that the money-laundering charge did not apply on statutory grounds since the anti-money laundering law was not in place at the time the supposed crime was committed. The SC has also said that the definition of money laundering did not apply in this case since it could not be proven that the money was made through illegal means. The judgment comes as a vindication for the Sharif family in this particular case. Legally, Nawaz Sharif and his children are not yet out of the woods since they still face the Panama Papers case. But this does show that the environment created during the legal proceedings, where many assumed guilt before it could be proven, made it difficult to get to the truth.

The Hudaibiya judgment, particularly the performance of the JIT and NAB, will invariably lead to questions about the investigation in the Panama case. At the time, questioned were raised about the selection of the JIT and the way it conducted its work. Those questions were never resolved. The Panama judgment too was controversial because of the extremely narrow grounds on which it was decided and the fact that it couldn’t be used as a precedent in later cases. The Sharifs will surely point to the Hudaibiya judgment as exculpation in all cases and proof that they are being targeted in a political vendetta. This could be used by Nawaz Sharif as part of his aggressive strategy to win over the public by pointing to conspiracies against him. The Hudaibiya judgment is particularly good news for Shahbaz Sharif, who now faces no other legal cases and so will be free to take over as prime minister should the PML-N prevail in the next elections. This is certainly a legal and political victory for the Sharifs and they will now hope it turns the tide in their favour, both in the legal cases currently pending in the courts and in the equally important court of public opinion.