Nawaz among rulers arrested or convicted when they were over 65

LAHORE: The 68-year old former Pakistani head of government, Nawaz Sharif, is the latest addition to the club of global rulers punished by courts when they were more than 65 years of age, research shows.

Four-time former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, had started a year of community service at the age of 77 in 2014 at a care home near Milan following a tax fraud conviction.

The "BBC News," in its May 9, 2014, report had stated: "But this is not the only court case the 77-year-old has been embroiled in. Berlusconi was sentenced to four years in prison last year, automatically reduced to one under a 2006 pardon act.

He is doing community service instead of prison because the Italian legal system is lenient to the over-70s."

In April 2009, Peru’s President, Alberto Fujimoro, was convicted of human rights crimes at the age of 70 and sentenced to 25 years in prison, the first time a democratically elected Latin American President was been found guilty in his own country of such offenses.

News agency "Reuters" had viewed: "Once lauded as a hero, Fujimori, 70, could spend the rest of his life in prison. The verdict is likely to have far-reaching political implications for Peru."

Former Argentinean President, General Reynaldo Bignone, was convicted of human rights violations in 2010 when he was 82 years old.

In March 2018, according to a leading British newspaper "the Independent," the ageing general died in prison, aged 90, while serving a number of sentences for crimes against humanity.

He was the last leader of Argentina’s brutal dictatorship of 1976 to 1983.

He was convicted for abduction of babies from alleged dissidents and the murder of dozens of purported subversives..

Marshal Philippe Petain, Prime Minister of France from 1940 to 1942, was arrested in 1947 for treason at the age of 91.

He was contently tried and convicted for collaborating with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany.

Although Petain had still been in good health for his age at the time of his imprisonment, by late 1947 his memory lapses were worsening and he was beginning to suffer from incontinence, sometimes soiling himself in front of visitors and sometimes no longer recognizing his wife.

He was originally sentenced to death, but because of his outstanding military leadership in World War I, his sentence was commuted to life in prison and he died in 1951, aged 95.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was convicted at the age of 69 on November 5, 2006 of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging for killing 148 Shi'as in 1982. He was executed on December 30, 2006.

Celal Bayar, President and Prime Minister of Turkey, was imprisoned at the age of 77 in 1960.

He and 15 other party members were tried for violating the Constitution and sentenced to death by a military-appointed Kangaroo court in 1961, but was released in 1964 due to ill-health and finally pardoned in 1966, when he was 83.

Celal Bayar died in 1986 at the age of 103 after a brief illness.

Former Romanian President, Nicolae Ceauescu, was 71 when he was tried and convicted of economic sabotage and genocide in 1989.

He and his wife were executed by firing squad immediately after being captured by country’s armed forces following a revolution.

Former South Korean President, General Chun Doo-hwan, was sentenced to death at the age of 65 in 1996 for a massacre but was later pardoned by his successor, President Kim Young-sam.

East German leader, Erich Honecker, had sought asylum in the Chilean embassy in Moscow in 1991 at the age of 79, but was extradited back to Germany a year later to stand trial for his role in the human rights abuses committed by the his government.

However, the proceedings were abandoned due to illness and he was freed from custody to travel to join his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994 from cancer.

Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines was indicted at the age of 71 in 1988.