File photo of Suleman Shehbaz
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday ordered Suleman Shehbaz to surrender before it on Dec. 13, while barring authorities from arresting him upon his return to Pakistan.
Shehbaz, the younger son of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, left Pakistan in October 2018 and has since been living in London. Earlier this week, he traveled with his family to Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah, announcing that he would then return to Pakistan on Saturday (Dec. 10). A key reason for his self-exile was the registration of several cases against by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB)—along with his father, his brother Hamza and other Sharif family members—with the Assets Recovery Unit set up by the ousted PTI-led government accusing him of money-laundering and misuse of public office. However, the U.K.’s National Crime Agency did not find any evidence to support these allegations.
While hearing his plea for a two-week protective bail on Thursday, IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq was informed by Suleman’s lawyer, Amjad Pervez, that all the cases against his client were registered after he had left the country and he should be granted protective bail prior to his return. However, the court informed the lawyer that it cannot grant bail in absence of the petitioner.
To this, Pervez sought a bar on authorities from arresting his client, adding his client would reach Islamabad on Dec. 11. The IHC accepted this request and directed Suleman to appear before it on Dec. 13 after his return.
‘Fake cases’
In a statement issued from Madinah, Suleman claimed he had been forced to leave Pakistan after fake and manipulated cases were registered against him and his family to facilitate a new political order. Stressing that nobody chose to go into exile of their own free will, he said he had been left with no choice but to leave Pakistan “for safety” due to the unfair circumstances created by the previous government.
“There was no chance of any justice at that time when a whole system was put in place to bring in the hybrid system, displacing us as a family and as a political party,” he said. “The whole system was based on injustice and this system relied on lies, manipulations, and victimization. The whole system was geared to target us using fake cases and using the state machinery,” he added.
Describing the cases against him as “worst examples” of a “political witch-hunt” and victimization, he said there was no truth to the charges “cooked up by the National Accountability Bureau under the former NAB chairman Javed Iqbal and the Assets Recovery Unit.” Maintaining that the former NAB chairman had been “blackmailed” through “scandalous videos” to lodge fake cases, he added: “He [Iqbal] was told that he would be kicked out of the job if he didn’t frame these cases to provide non-stop lies to the media to assassinate our character. We will never wish this kind of cruelty to even our worst enemies in politics.”