Jailed ‘ex-PM’ Sharif appeals his sentence

Terror probe opens

ISLAMABAD, July 16, (Agencies): Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif appealed his 10-year prison sentence on Monday, his party spokeswoman said, just days after returning to the country ahead of parliament elections later this month.

Violence has escalated in the run-up to the balloting, with horrific attacks over the weekend killing 153 people, including a provincial assembly candidate during an election rally in southwestern Baluchistan province.

Sharif was sentenced in absentia on July 6 over his family’s purchases of luxury apartments in London. If the judge grants the appeal, Sharif could be released on bail, pending his retrial.

Maryam Aurangzeb, a spokeswoman for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, said the appeal was filed Monday with the Islamabad High Court. “Our lawyers are seeking to overturn of the verdict against Nawaz Sharif and his family on legal grounds,” she said.

Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Mohammad Safdar were also sentenced in the same trial, to seven years and one year, respectively. On Friday, Sharif and his daughter returned home from London, where Sharif’s wife is critically ill in hospital, following a heart attack last month.

In election-related violence, gunmen on Sunday night opened fire at the election headquarters of the secular Awami National Party in the town of Chaman in Baluchistan, wounding former senator Daud Achakzai who was campaigning for Zumurak Khan, a contender for a seat in the provincial legislature.

On Friday in Baluchistan’s Mastung district, an Islamic State suicide bomber killed Siraj Raisani, a candidate for the provincial assembly and 148 others during an election rally.

So far more than 170 people have died in election-related attacks, underscoring the security threat ahead of the vote.

Pakistanis will go to polls on July 25 to elect 342 members of the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, which is the country’s law-making body, and four provincial legislatures.

Sharif

Ousted

Sharif, who was ousted from office by the Supreme Court last July over corruption, is not running in the elections and has been banned from holding any office for the rest of his life. His Muslim League Party is still a leading contender, hoping to win a majority of the seats in parliament and form the next government.

However, the Muslim League Party is facing tough competition from the party of leading opposition candidate Imran Khan, a former cricket star. Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf party also has high expectations of winning the vote and having him become the next prime minister.

Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities have opened a criminal investigation into leaders of jailed former prime minister Sharif’s political party under an antiterrorism law, 10 days before a hotly contested general election, according to police documents.

The case relates to a march staged by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on July 13, when Sharif returned to Pakistan, which defied a ban on holding public rallies on a Friday. The former premier was arrested minutes after landing in the country after being sentenced in absentia by an anti-corruption court on July 6.

Copies of two separate First Information Reports (FIR), which mark the formal opening of a criminal investigation, named PML-N leader Shehbaz Sharif, who is Nawaz Sharif’s brother, and a number of other key figures. They include former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who replaced Sharif last year and served until June, when the caretaker government took over.

The FIRs cite section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which has broad provisions defining terrorism to include creating public fear, and lists 10 alleged violations of ordinary criminal law including unlawful assembly.

Suicide

In related news, the death toll from a suicide bombing that hit southwestern Pakistan on Friday has risen to 153, making it the second most lethal attack in the country’s history, officials said Sunday as top politicians joined a day of national mourning.

The attack claimed by the Islamic State group was the latest in a series of deadly blasts at various election campaign events ahead of national polls on July 25.

A suicide bomber detonated as local politician Siraj Raisani spoke to a crowd of supporters in southwestern Mastung district on Friday. Raisani was among those killed.

The dead included nine children aged between six and 11, senior government official Qaim Lashari said Sunday, adding that 70 people remained in hospital with five in a critical condition.

The latest toll topped that of a 2007 bomb attack in Karachi targeting former premier Benazir Bhutto, which killed 139 people.

The country’s worst-ever attack was an assault on a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2014 that left more than 150 people dead, many of them children.

Authorities will publish adverts in local newspapers on Monday seeking information on bodies taken home directly after the latest attack and buried without informing police, Lashari said, meaning the official toll could rise again.

“We are trying our best to ascertain the exact data of those killed in the blast,” he told AFP.

Saeed Jamal, another senior government official, confirmed the latest death toll and number wounded in the attack.

Politicians including high-profile election candidate and former international cricketer Imran Khan visited provincial capital Quetta Sunday to pay their respects to the dead.

“It was a huge tragedy,” Khan told a press conference, calling for the military, police and civilian government to prevent further attacks.

Friday’s blast came hours after another bomb killed at least four people at a campaign rally in Bannu in the country’s northwest. A third bomb killed 22 people at another rally in Peshawar on Tuesday.