The Pakistani authority plans to seal all main roads to Islamabad's international airport to stop people from welcoming the exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is scheduled to return to the country on Monday, the News Network International (NNI) news agency reported on Sunday.
The areas within five km of the airport will be sealed, a local TV channel Geo quoted official sources as saying.
"High alert has been declared at all international airports of the country ahead of the return of Sharif," according to local media reports.
Spokesman of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in London Nadir Chaudhry said that Sharif will board a Muscat-bound plane on Sunday night from London and will change the flight at Muscat for Islamabad.
"Sharif is likely to be deported after his plane is landed at the Islamabad airport," according to local TV channels reports.
Central Information Secretary of PML-N Ahsan Iqbal told a news conference in Islamabad that PML-N supporters will reach Islamabad airport despite what he described as crackdown on his party's activists.
"The supporters would not allow the plane to take off," Ahsan Iqbal said, adding " they would sacrifice their lives if Nawaz Sharif was deported."
PML-N general secretary Zafar Iqbal Jhagra said that around two thousand supporters of PML-N had been arrested across the country, mostly in Punjab province. All those who were arrested who were coming to Islamabad.
Sharif, twice elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan, served two non-consecutive terms. He was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000 on charges of hijacking and terrorism after General Pervez Musharraf staged a bloodless coup in the country. The Pakistani government agreed to commute his sentence from life in prison to exile in Saudi Arabia for ten years.
Source: Xinhua
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