Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif was on Friday sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison by a corruption court in Islamabad, lawyers said, dealing a serious blow to his party’s troubled campaign ahead of July 25 elections.
The verdict, a potentially significant boost for the main opposition party led by former World Cup cricketer Imran Khan, immediately raised questions over whether Sharif would return to Pakistan from London, where his wife is receiving cancer treatment. Pakistan has no extradition treaty with the UK.
Sharif was last year ousted from his third term as prime minister by the Pakistani Supreme Court following a corruption investigation and banned from politics for life, but remains a powerful symbol for his ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
Photo: EPA-EFE
Speaking at a news conference in London, Sharif framed the charges against him as a conspiracy by the powerful military, which has ruled Pakistan for about half of its 70-year history.
“This punishment cannot stop me from my struggle,” Sharif said, adding that he would return and face prison as soon as he is able to have a word with her wife, who is on a ventilator.
He urged his supporters to vote for his party at upcoming national elections later this month.
Small protests broke out after the verdict at the court in Islamabad, which was surrounded by heavy security, and in some other Pakistani cities including Multan in Punjab, Sharif’s provincial stronghold.
“We reject this decision,” his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who is leading the PML-N into Pakistan’s second-ever democratic transition of power, told a televised news conference in Lahore.
For his part, Khan greeted the verdict with jubilation at a campaign rally in the Swat Valley in Pakistan’s northwest.
“Today all Pakistanis must offer thanksgiving prayers, because today is the beginning of a new Pakistan. Now robbers will not go into assemblies, but to jails,” he told a roaring crowd of thousands.
Lawyers said Sharif had also been fined ￡8 million (US$10.63 million), and that the court had ordered the federal government to confiscate high-end properties in London’s exclusive Mayfair neighborhood.
Analysts said the verdict would damage the PML-N’s campaign as the less charismatic Shahbaz seeks to fend off the challenge by Khan’s Movement for Justice.
“No matter what the PML-N says, the decision is going to damage their vote bank,” analyst Rifaat Hussain said, adding that he thought it unlikely Sharif would return.
Recent surveys show that up to 22 percent of voters are undecided, and with further serious allegations of corruption against the PML-N leadership there is little chance of Sharif mobilizing the “sympathy factor” after the verdict to attract support, he said.
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