ISLAMABAD: Five prosecution witnesses Thursday recorded their statements before the accountability court (AC) in two supplementary corruption references of Al-Azizia and Flagship against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Captain (R) Muhammad Safdar.
The courtroom witnessed heated atmosphere as legal counsel for Nawaz Sharif Khawaja Haris strongly objected over the attitude of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecution head Sardar Muzaffar Abbasi for frequent interruptions during the cross examination.
Due to frequent interruptions during the cross examination of a prosecution witness Naveedur Rehman, special security guard at Pakistan's High Commission in London, at one instance, Khawaja Haris called Muzaffar Abbasi a 'Dheeth' to which the later left the courtroom in protest, while the court took a break of 15 minutes.
Khawaja Haris objected that why Muzaffar Abbasi was interfering during his questions to the witness. Later, Abbasi returned to the court and demanded an apology or the right to use the same word against Khawaja Haris. Haris said ‘sorry’ and then both shook hands. Another thing whichremained contentious between the defence and prosecution side was how to record the testimony of star witness Wajid Zia who headed the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) formed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan to probe the Panama Papers issue.
Khawaja Haris was insisting that since Wajid Zia has to base his testimony on the same JIT report and attached documents, so he should once record his statement in all the three references and later the defence would cross examine him in this matter. The prosecution side said that Wajid Zia would record his statement separately in all the three corruption references pending against the Sharif family.
The two sides will further argue over this matter today (Friday) as Wajid Zia has been summoned by accountability court to record his statement in Avenfield apartments corruption references where the former prime minister with his two sons, daughter and son-in-law are the accused. It is to mention here that Wajid Zia and investigation officer have only been left in the Avenfield apartments corruption reference to record their statements.
Meanwhile, special security guard at Pakistan High Commission London told the court about delivering of certain documents and said that he did not know Muhammad Kamran, IO of the case, when he recorded his statement.
Another official of the high commission, Muhammad Zakiuddin also recorded his statement about similar issues pertaining to delivering of the documents. Apart from those, three other bank officials, Irfan Mehmood, Muhammad Ali Raza and Azhar Ikram recorded their statements in connection with the Flagship and Al-Azizia corruption references. The bank officials provided document regarding transactions from Al-Azizia to different persons. They, however, said that they neither prepared, nor supervised and neither signed these documents.
