LONDON/ISLAMABAD: Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, along with his daughter, Maryam, commenced his journey from the city’s Heathrow Airport late Thursday night back to his motherland, Geo News reported.
Earlier, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo and the former first daughter had reached the London airport for their scheduled flight, a while after seeing Sharif’s ailing wife, Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, who is currently in the hospital, undergoing treatment.
Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz, who were convicted by a Pakistani court in the Avenfield Apartments case and sentenced to 10 and 7 years in jail respectively, boarded a foreign flight on Thursday and will arrive in Lahore via Abu Dhabi at 6.15 pm (local time) on Friday.
میرے بچوں کو ووٹ کو عزت دو کا نعرہ لگانے کی سزا دی جارہی ہے. اگر انہیں جیل بھیجا گیاتو میں بھی انکے ساتھ جاوں گی pic.twitter.com/VnjwMUE0Z4
— PML(N) (@pmln_org) July 12, 2018
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman Javed Iqbal has ordered taking all necessary measures to arrest Sharif and Maryam upon their arrival at the airport.
He has also formed a 16-member team to arrest them and shift them to Adiala jail in Rawalpindi after producing them at the accountability court that sentenced the father-daughter duo last week.
It is important to note that the same helicopter that Sharif had used while he held the office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan would take him to the Adiala prison.
“Over 100 police commandos will be deployed at the airport on Friday to avert any untoward incident,” senior Lahore police officer Sardar Asif said.
Prior to his departure, Sharif had said his wife finally opened her eyes for a few seconds — something he had revealed a day prior that he wished for. He, however, regretted having to leave her in such state and return to Pakistan.
Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, wife of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, opened her eyes after a month in coma, the Sharif family confirmed on Thursday.
Nawaz said that his wife opened her eyes for a few seconds on Thursday, regretting that he had to return to Pakistan leaving her in such precarious state.
“After exactly one month, she [my mother] has opened her eyes. She looked around after opening her eyes,” Hussain Nawaz told reporters in London. “For some time her ventilator settings and sedatives were being reduced.”
He said that his mother had not yet returned to the stage where she could speak.
Ahead of her arrival in Pakistan, Maryam clarified on Twitter that their plan to come back remained “unchanged”, while asking her children to be “brave in the face of oppression”.
Since every attempt to discourage us from coming back failed, planners trying to spread confusion. Plan unchanged. WE’RE COMING Insha’Allah
— Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) July 12, 2018
“Told my kids to be brave in the face of oppression. But kids will still be kids,” Maryam wrote in a tweet ahead of her departure.
“Goodbyes are hard, even for the grownups,” she added.
Maryam Nawaz also confirmed on Twitter that her mother briefly opened her eyes.
“First time in 30 days, Ami opened eyes for a few seconds. Don’t know if she saw or registered us. Still not conscious and on the ventilator. Prayers solicited,” she tweeted.
Kulsoom Nawaz had been unconscious and in a critical condition after she suffered a cardiac arrest last month. She is being treated at the Harley Street Clinic in London.
In August 2017, Kulsoom Nawaz was diagnosed with lymphoma (throat) cancer and has undergone several chemotherapy sessions.
The two had flown off to London before Eid-ul-Fitr to tend to Begum Kulsoom and were expected to land in Lahore around 6PM on Friday, a week after an accountability court sentenced the father and daughter to 10 and 7 years, respectively, in prison in the Avenfield Properties reference case.
Deputy Inspector General Operations Shahzad Akbar said 10,000 police officers will be deployed across the city on Friday to “maintain law and order”.
The Anti-Riot Unit will be on alert, and the Dolphin Squad and the Police Response Unit will be deployed to sensitive areas of the city. “No one will be allowed to take the law into their own hands,” he said.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) disclosed that it had arranged two helicopters to shift the father-daughter duo to Central Jail Rawalpindi — the Adiala prison — immediately as they land in Lahore.
One of the two choppers would be stationed at Lahore airport, while the other would be in Islamabad, with orders from the NAB to arrest the former premier and his daughter upon landing at either of the two airports.
PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurenzeb said that police have detained over 300 PML-N workers mostly from Lahore to stop them from welcoming Sharif at the airport.
Such a massive crackdown on PML-N workers never happened even in the martial law regime, she said.
Since every attempt to discourage us from coming back failed, planners trying to spread confusion. Plan unchanged. WE’RE COMING Insha’Allah
— Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) July 12, 2018
She said that despite all such tactics, the PML-N workers will reach the airport to give historic welcome to Sharif.
“We will not accept the results of the 25 July polls if pre-poll rigging is not stopped. The Election Commission of Pakistan must act and order release of our detained workers forthwith. Otherwise, we will understand that both the ECP and caretaker government are puppet and someone else is calling the shots (establishment),” PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif told reporters, in an apparent reference to the army.
Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal, the NAB Chairman, has warned that strict action will be taken against anyone who obstructs the arrest of the PML-N leaders.
Before leaving for Lahore, Sharif pledged that he will liberate Pakistan from “those who are running a state above the state”.
“Despite seeing the bars of prison in front of my eyes, I am going to Pakistan,” he told journalists in the British capital where his wife Kulsoom is undergoing treatment for throat cancer.
The 68-year-old leader said he was returning to the country so that he could pay back the Pakistani nation for what they had done for him: making him prime minister three times.
“I ask the people, especially women, to come out of their homes like tigers, and cross all barricades to reach the Lahore airport. No one can stop a mass gathering of the people,” he said.
“We used to hear about ‘a state within a state’ but now things have gone to the extent that there is ‘a state above the state’. We will have to change this. 25 July will be a defining moment in the country’s history after 14 August, 1947 (Independence Day),” he said, adding that Maryam and he would hear the election results in jail.
Meanwhile, Sharif’s mother Begum Shamim Akhter said in a video message that the father-daughter duo was “innocent” and she, too, will go to jail if they are arrested.
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