Nawaz Sharif files petition in SC; seeks end to his exile

Islamabad, Aug 2 (UNI) Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif today filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking a directive against his continued exile.

Sharif had gone into exile in December 2000 along with his family under an agreement between the Pakistani and Royal Saudi governments, a year after he was ousted in a bloodless military coup in October 1999.

Military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf repeatedly said Sharif and his family members could not return to Pakistan for ten years under the deal, which had never been made public.

''The government should be ordered that it may not directly or indirectly obstruct, hamper or resist return of Sharif and his family to the country, or to force them to live in continued exile,'' said the petition, filed by Khawaja Mohammad Asif, one of the MPs of Sharif's own faction of Pakistan Muslim League.

The petition said Nawaz Sharif, his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif and other family members had the inalienable, unqualified right to remain in Pakistan and participate in and contest the forthcoming general elections, due early next year.

Sharif's petition comes against a backdrop of a highly volatile political and security situation in Pakistan, with a series of suicide attacks taking place all over the country in an apparent backlash to the military raid on the Lal Masjid early last month, which left 102 people, including 75 suspected radicals, dead.

''The fundamental right of the petitioner (Nawaz Sharif) to enter and move freely throughout Pakistan cannot be arbitrarily defeated in violation of law,'' the petition said.

Shahbaz Sharif has also filed a similar petition in the Supreme Court seeking his return to the country. ''We hope Nawaz Sharif will return to Pakistan before the election and participate in and contest polls,'' PML(N) Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq told reporters.

The government, he said, had utilised all available means to prevent the return of Sharif's family to their country. But now, Mr Sharif has decided to return home and contest elections, Mr Haq said, without giving a possible date for the former prime minister's back home journey.

UNI