Islamabad, October 30
The Supreme Court today adjourned the hearing in the contempt case over the deportation of exiled PM Nawaz Sharif till November 8 but reaffirmed the earlier verdict that Sharif could not be prevented from returning to Pakistan.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry who presided over the 8-member Bench hearing the case expressed his extreme displeasure over delaying tactics by the government in fixing responsibility as to who ordered Sharif’s deportation on landing at the Islamabad Airport on September 10.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and heads of all
other agencies involved in the forced deportation of Sharif have been impleaded in the case. But the question as to who ordered the deportation has become a mystery because of conflicting statements by the defendants.
All of them have pleaded innocent in the Supreme Court, with the PM saying he had no part in any alleged conspiracy to flout the court order. Foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan in his written statement before the court said he had received verbal orders from the Prime Minister on September 9 to requisite a PIA VVIP plane but was not told what the purpose was.
What emerges from these high-level responses is that none of the agencies or authorities is ready to accept the responsibility and most say some “unidentified characters” whisked Nawaz Sharif away.
The court during a previous hearing had ordered all respondents to be present during the hearing personally or through counsel. The CJ adjourned the hearing for an hour when nobody was prepared to accept responsibility. He directed the attorney-general Qayyum Malik to talk to top personalities to get an appropriate response. Malik returned to say he was unable to contact appropriate authority and sought more time while promising to get a firm answer to the court’s questions.
Sharif’s counsel Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim maintained that the former PM was forcibly deported in a special plane to Jeddah in violation of a court verdict that he had an inalienable right to enter and remain in Pakistan.
