ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) vice president Maryam Nawaz placed before the Islamabad High Court on Tuesday what she called a factual record to substantiate her claim that she had been dragged into the Avenfield apartments reference and subsequently convicted not on legal grounds but for other reasons.

The IHC registrar’s office, however, raised administrative objections to her application filed through her counsel Irfan Qadir. A two-judge IHC bench comprising Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani will hear the arguments on the objections raised by the registrar office before a formal hearing of the application as well as her appeal against the conviction.

Ms Nawaz also submitted transcripts and links of the speeches of former IHC judge Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui and conversation of late accountability court judge Mohammad Arshad Malik in which he had confessed to having convicted PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif under duress.

Two-judge bench to hear arguments on objections raised by registrar office to her application

In addition, she placed before the IHC bench excerpts of Justice Siddiqui’s petition pending before the Supreme Court in which the former judge claimed that the spymaster had met him a few days before the conviction of Sharif family members and tried to persuade him not to grant them bail before the 2018 general elections.

Maryam Nawaz’s application referred to a speech delivered by Justice Siddiqui at a function of the Rawalpindi Bar Association on July 21, 2018, which categorically made reference to the involvement of certain persons in manipulating judicial verdicts, influencing the marking of cases and formation of benches in the IHC.

The application pointed out that the petition filed by Justice Siddiqui “is still pending adjudication before the Hon’ble Supreme Court which has a direct bearing on the instant case”.

“The statement of Justice Siddiqui not only cast enormous doubt on the impartiality of the impugned decision from which the instant appeal has arisen, but it also unfolds the pressure and manipulation which may have led to the orders of the Supreme Court in respect of filing of the references against the former PM and his family, the conduct of the officials of the National Accountability Bureau thereafter and the subsequent trial in the Avenfield reference which finally culminated in the judgement and sentence dated July 6, 2018,” it argued.

Referring to the viral video of late Arshad Malik, the application said the judge “claimed that there was immense pressure on him to convict Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif”, and requested the court to “take notice of all such material in the light of the serious violations of law and the Constitution…and in such an eventuality the benefit of doubt as a matter of trite law must go to the accused and certainly not to the prosecution”.

The application also cited the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Khawaja Saad Rafique case in which the court observed: “There is widespread perception of it [NAB] being employed as a tool for oppression and victimisation of political opponent by those in power.”

The application said the history of Pakistan was replete with instances of change of regime by way of political engineering, adding that the Supreme Court had through its July 28, 2017 verdict disqualified the then prime minister and sent him home.

It regretted that a judge of the apex court had supervised the investigation, monitored the prosecution and almost controlled the entire process of adjudication, especially when the Supreme Court in matters pertaining to the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 was neither the investigator nor the prosecutor or an adjudicator. The Constitution or the relevant law had not assigned such a role to the Supreme Court, it argued.

The application requested the court to set aside her conviction keeping in view these facts.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2021