Accountability court’s decision not a shocker

ISLAMABAD: The unsurprising decision, entailing heaviest punishment for ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was widely anticipated much before it was handed down by Judge Muhammad Bashir, and the judgment is a flashback to the April 7, 2000 verdict against the former premier by an anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) that had imposed life term in the plane hijacking case.

Nobody was caught off guard by the decision because it was being predicted by all and sundry since the start of the Sharif family trial in the three references. It was universally stressed that no miracle was going to happen and acquittal was out of question.

In the plane hijacking case eighteen years back, Nawaz Sharif was awarded life term. ATC judge Rehmat Hussain Jafferi, who was later elevated to the Sindh High Court and subsequently to the Supreme Court, had adjudicated upon this case. Thus, this was the second time that Nawaz Sharif was imposed the severest penalty--conviction, heavy fine and confiscation of the London apartments.

Not only Nawaz Sharif but his daughter and heir apparent Maryam, who has been active politically much more than any other leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and has been carrying forward his narrative after the July 28 judgement of the Supreme Court in the Panama case, also earned harsh punishment.

Her election from a Lahore constituency of the National Assembly is right now in doldrums unless the instant judgement is suspended by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in an appeal, which will be filed by the Sharif family. She was knocked out of the scramble, though temporarily, even before she could fight for it in the July 25 general elections.

In hundred per cent cases, high courts usually quickly suspend such decisions when they are appealed against. The rulings on such appeals are decided by hearing the two sides, a process which doesn’t complete promptly. Then, the appeal goes to the Supreme Court after its disposal at the IHC.

The process of unprecedentedly punishing former prime minister unfolded on July 28 when the Supreme Court ousted him as the premier on the charge of not taking the receivable salary from his son’s foreign company and for possessing “iqama”, which, even in the opinion of his detractors, including Imran Khan, made the judgement controversial.

Later, Nawaz Sharif, along with several others, was declared ineligible for life to contest elections by the apex court when it interpreted Article 62(1)(f) which had hit them. Subsequently, he was divested of the party presidency by the Supreme Court on the ground that a disqualified person can’t hold such position.

Throughout the trial, the accountability presiding officer has been a non-relief giving judge in the references he has been hearing over the past nine months against the Sharif family, which the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had filed on the direction of the Supreme Court. Hardly any plea among a large number of requests that the defendants made during the proceedings was ever accepted by the accountability judge. Even minor demands like exemption from appearance were rejected. However, when Nawaz Sharif and Maryam had been in London since June 14 to look after ailing Begum Kulsoom, they had been getting exemption.

Nawaz Sharif, Maryam and Captain (R) Muhammad Safdar made it a point to regularly attend the judicial process, giving up their political engagements. They did not skip even a single hearing, citing any reason or excuse, despite their grave reservations about and objections to the ‘one-sided accountability’.

The accused and their lawyer Khawaja Haris made not even a slight attempt to delay, hamper or drag the proceedings. They have been following the fast track set by the accountability court. The apex court had been fixing the timeline for the subordinate forum to speedily decide the references.

Once the accused sought the merger of three references on the ground that they mostly have the same witnesses and similar pack of allegations, but the judge dismissed the plea. Then, they also challenged the recording of testimony of two witnesses--a close relative of the Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT)’s head Wajid Zia and a foreigner--via video link from London. It was also rejected.

The plane hijacking case was decided five months after Nawaz Sharif was overthrown in military coup by Pervez Musharraf on October 12, 1999. In the first 38 days of his arrest, the ex-premier was held incommunicado and saw the light of the day when he was produced before the ATC in Karachi.

The present reference was wrapped up in over nine months. Both the cases saw a rare speed. Back in 2000, the military regime had put pressure on the ATC to quickly wind up the trial. This time, the accountability court was under instructions from the Supreme Court to decide the references within a certain timeframe.