IHT : Former pakistani prime minister fighting deportation

Former pakistani prime minister fighting deportation

By Carlotta Gall | September 11, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Lawyers representing the exiled former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was deported to Saudi Arabia on Monday, filed petitions in the Supreme Court on Tuesday against the government, accusing it of abducting him and of acting in contempt of the court.

Relatives and members of his political party said that Sharif was tricked when he was forced onto a plane after his arrest at the Islamabad airport and that he did not go willingly or knowingly to Saudi Arabia. They vowed to fight his case in the courts and demanded that the government bring him back to Pakistan to give his version of events.

At the same time, Sharif's wife, Kulsoom Nawaz, announced from London that she would take up the political mantle of his party and return to Pakistan to lead the campaign for elections in her husband's place. A rival politician, Abida Hussain, said that she could bank on a sympathy vote and that she could easily sweep central Punjab, the most populous province, in the elections.

Reaction on the streets to Sharif's deportation was muted. Much of the leadership of Sharif's party and some other opposition leaders remained in detention or under house arrest. Lawyers called a strike in protest at the treatment of Sharif, closing down all the courts, including the Supreme Court, which adjourned midmorning.

Politicians and analysts said that the manhandling of Sharif by security forces at the Islamabad airport soon after he arrived had not been positively perceived in the country and that it would play against Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, in the coming weeks and months as he tried to hold on to power.

Government ministers continued to say that Sharif had chosen to be deported rather than go to prison on charges of money laundering. They said he had agreed to fulfill an earlier agreement, in 2000, to go into exile in Saudi Arabia for 10 years in return for having a life sentence commuted.

But Sharif's lawyer, Fakhruddin Ebrahim, said he was deported illegally, especially in view of the recent Supreme Court ruling that said he should be allowed to return and remain in Pakistan.

"He was abducted and forcibly deported," Ebrahim said. "The government is a party to the abduction and has flouted the constitution and the Supreme Court."

Ebrahim filed two petitions on Sharif's behalf at the Supreme Court, one for contempt of court and one to request that the court order the government to bring Sharif back to Pakistan so he could appear before the court and give his version of events.

The chief justice said he would examine the petitions in two days after a detailed judgment from a previous hearing on the case was finished, Ebrahim said.

Hamza Sharif, the nephew of the exiled former leader, said the government version, reiterated by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, was a "blatant lie." Sharif was marched on to a plane and told he was being flown to Karachi, the largest city, or Quetta, near the Afghan border, and was told midflight that he was actually being taken to Saudi Arabia, he said.

"He never wanted to leave this country," he said of his uncle. He said he had talked twice to his uncle and that on Tuesday he was in high spirits. He will remain in Saudi Arabia for the meantime in the hope that the government will be forced to bring him before the Supreme Court.

Javed Hashmi, a vice president of Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, said the plane carrying Sharif was logged at the Islamabad airport as going to Quetta.

But Sharif was told he was being taken to Karachi to appear before a court there. After an hour and a half, by which time the plane should have landed, he was told he was being taken to Saudi Arabia, Hashmi said.

Hashmi, a member of Parliament and a vocal opponent of Musharraf, was placed under house arrest in his parliamentary lodgings on Sunday night, as were several leading members of the opposition parties. Hashmi was recently released after eight years in prison for his opposition. His daughter, also a legislator, was arrested too, but later released, he said.

The opposition politicians detained were all members of the All Parties Democratic Movement, formed in July by Sharif to fight Musharraf's continued rule. They were all planning to go to the airport to greet Sharif on Monday morning and were either put under guard at their residences, or arrested at police checkpoints on the way to the airport.

Hundreds of political activists have been detained for one month under a public maintenance order, but a few of them were released by Tuesday.

The information secretary of Sharif's party, Ahsan Iqbal, was transferred for one month to a jail in the southern town of Bahawalpur, said his son, Mohammed Iqbal.

Liaqat Baloch, deputy leader of the coalition of religious parties, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, was also placed under guard at his lodgings, but the police allowed journalists to see him. "At this stage, Musharraf is afraid of the political movement," he said.