The Pakistani Special Accountability Court on Friday accepted the application of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for the re-opening and re- trial of the corruption cases against Pakistan Muslim League-N ( PML-N) chief and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members.
The Court will start regular hearing from Aug. 25 of three corruption references against them, the News Network International (NNI) news agency reported on Friday.
Earlier, NAB in its petition took the plea that since the accused were abroad and in exile, cases against them were deferred for indefinite period, the NNI report said, adding that NAB wanted to re-open and retry these cases and it sought permission from the court.
The Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said on Thursday that Nawaz Sharif's brother Shahbaz Sharif, president of PML-N, was allowed to return to Pakistan after hearing his petition. Meanwhile the appeal of Nawaz Sharif to come back to Pakistan was still under consideration in the supreme court.
PML-N filed two constitutional petitions at the beginning of August in the Supreme Court. According to the petitions, PML-N requested the federation should neither obstruct the return of Sharif family members from exile nor stop them from participating in the next general elections.
Nawaz Sharif served two nonconsecutive terms as the prime minister of Pakistan. He was thrown in prison and tried by Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Courts, which sentenced him to several life sentences for corruption, hijacking, tax evasion, embezzlement, and terrorism in 2000. The government agreed to commute his sentence from life in prison to exile in Saudi Arabia.
Source: Xinhua
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