LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz vice president Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday released two more purported video clips of Accountability Court Judge Arshad Malik and claimed their content belied his claim that he had not met PML-N ‘sympathiser’ Nasir Butt.

She said that in the wake of the ‘video saga’, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led government wanted to arrest her at any cost.

She also said she would appear before the accountability court to face what she called “an illegal” case against her.

Uploading a video clip about “Mr Malik’s meeting with Mr Butt at the former’s residence” on Twitter, the PML-N vice president said: “Judge Arshad Malik’s official car with a green number plate comes to escort Nasir Butt sb who then follows the car to Judge sb’s residence. [It] belies all claims of Judge Arshad Malik sb that he mentioned in his press release.”

About the second clip, she said: “Nasir Butt sb entering Judge Sb’s residence. Judge Arshad Malik sb comes in, greets Nasir sb & switches the lights on.”

Judge Malik was also seen in his purported video released last week by Maryam Nawaz in which he appeared to say that he had been “pressurised and blackmailed” into convicting her father (former prime minister Nawaz Sharif) in the Al-Azizia reference to seven years’ imprisonment, even though no allegation of money laundering or other financial corruption had been proved.

The following day Mr Malik termed the video “fabricated and false” and said it had been made by twisting his conversations on different occasions. “The videos showed during the press conference were fake and based on lies and assumptions. Therefore, legal action should be taken against those individuals involved in this,” he had said in his press release.

Ms Maryam has said: “The judge sahib is helpless and a hostage.” She claims she has more “damning videos” that would be released if “nasty games” are played with her.

Turning to the issue of denial of media coverage to PML-N leaders, she said on Wednesday: “Even former premier Shahid Khan Abbasi was live on air but dropped as soon as he mentioned the Judge [Malik] being blackmailed & coerced into giving a judgement against MNS [Mian Nawaz Sharif]. They’re scared to death.”

After the release of the first purported video of the judge, the PML-N’s vice president was summoned by the Islamabad accountability court in a case about “fake trust deed” related to the Avenfield properties.

On Wednesday a NAB team delivered the summons at Ms Maryam’s Jati Umra residence at Raiwind. The notice has asked her, or her counsel, to appear in court on July 19 to respond to the application filed by the National Accountability Bureau that seeks initiation of proceedings against her for presenting the “fake trust deed” before the investigation team and the judge of the court.

The PML-N leader said she would not present her arrest on a platter to the government by not appearing before the court. “I do not want to lose a chance to expose the misdeeds of the selected government before the people of Pakistan. I will present irrefutable facts before the court in this respect,” she said in a series of tweets.

She went on to claim: “They want to either arrest or put me under house arrest at any cost. After failing to find anything against me they have reopened a case in which I had been handed down a sentence which the high court had suspended. This [case] is illegal, therefore it will not work.”

Assailing Prime Minister Imran Khan, Ms Maryam added: “Whom you are calling a convict has been punished through blackmailing of a judge. But you have been convicted by the US court and the judge in that case was not blackmailed to get the decision.”

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2019