ISLAMABAD: The deadline for ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s sons to surrender in the three references against them lapsed on Friday, as they continued to stay away from court proceedings despite the issuance of a proclamation against them last month.

Following directives of the Islamabad accountability court, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had on Oct 12 pasted the proclamation order in the premises of the Federal Judicial Complex (FJA) which houses the accountability court.

In the proclamation, Hussain Nawaz and Hassan Nawaz were asked to surrender and join the proceedings in the three references — Flagship Investment, Al-Azizia and Avenfield properties.

The references had been filed against Mr Sharif, his sons and daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law retired Captain Mohammad Safdar on the orders of the Supreme Court. The proclamation mentioned that the properties of the suspects would be seized if they continued to abscond.

Mr Sharif had requested the court to club all the references together. However, Accountability Judge Bashir rejected the plea on Nov 8.

In his written order, the judge said: “Section 17(d) of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 provides a mechanism which could be adopted or not depending on the circumstances of each case.”

The prosecution or the accused could not insist on conducting a joint trial of offences even if they were similar, the order noted. The accused/applicant could not justify clubbing of all the three references for a joint trail in the circumstances of the cases, the written order said.

Therefore, in order to avoid conflicting judgements or any likelihood of ignoring defence that will be produced by the applicant separately in each reference, all the three references will be decided simultaneously.

The court had further said that the request for single trial had been made in view of the convenience of the accused. The court noted that in the case of joint charges, the trial facts of each case could get mixed up. Moreover, the offences alleged in the three corruption references were not of same kind, the judge had noted.

Mr Sharif’s counsel had sought a joint trial, arguing that the main allegation in all three corruption references was same — that the assets under the names of Hassan and Hussain Nawaz were actually owned by Mr Sharif. The defence counsel had further argued that the three references had been supplemented by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) report, and six out of nine witnesses were common in references 18 and 19, while two witnesses out of 10 were common in all the three corruption references.

Mr Sharif’s counsel had argued that the alleged offence was the same under Section 9(a)(v) of the NAO in all three corruption references. This was the second time that the accountability court had dismissed an application submitted by Mr Sharif seeking a joint trial.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2017