RAWALPINDI, April 23 Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif filed an appeal in the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court on Thursday against his conviction by an accountabi lity court in a helicopter purchase case.

Judge Farrukh Latif of the accountability court had sentenced Mr Sharif on July 22, 2000, to 14 years` imprisonment and fined him Rs50 million. The trial was held in the Attock Fort.

The appeal has been flied by Advocate Khawaja Haris.

Mr Sharif has requested the LHC to set aside the judgment and declare his conviction unlawful because the trial was mock, unjust, unfair and hasty.

He said he had not been allowed to meet his counsel for consultations by the then dictator.

He also said that the court did not provide him a period of three weeks to prepare his defence against the charges of buying a helicopter in 1993 through income not shown in his assets.

Mr Sharif said in the appeal that the helicopter had been bought by a citizen of Qatar and there was no proof or evidence of his involvement in the corruption reference prepared by the National Accountability Bureau.

Taking to Dawn, Khawaja Haris said that at the time of the lower court trial Mr Sharif was also being tried for hatching conspiracy to hijack the plane of the then army chief and he was often taken to Karachi from Attock. “That also makes the trial in Attock as doubtful and conducted in haste.”

About the appeal being time-barred, he said the convict was exiled soon after the sentencing, giving him no time to seek legal remedy under the law. Mr Sharif and his family remained out of the country for eight years because he was not allowed to return.

Secondly, he said, when Nawaz Sharif returned to the county in 2007, he joined the campaign for independence of judiciary and decided not to file appeal against his conviction because higher judiciary had taken oath under the Provisional Constitution Order.

Thirdly, he said, the appellant was under the impression that under Article 45 of the Constitution he had been pardoned by the president of Pakistan and his conviction stood terminated.

Khawaja Haris said that under criminal laws courts had usually been liberal in condoning the time-limit for a convict sentenced to heavy punishment and hefty fine.