Nawaz Sharif conviction: This will be remembered as a black day in history, says Shahbaz

Islamabad, July 6: PML-N Chairman Shahbaz Sharif on Friday held a press conference soon after the Avenfield corruption reference verdict was announced.

"This will be remembered as a black day in history," Shahbaz said while adding that Nawaz appeared before the accountability court 109 times.

"We will take all legal and constitutional routes to fight for justice. Nawaz Sharif has always fought bravely": Shehbaz Sharif after former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to 10 years jail.

"All our candidates of PMLN are going to contest the election and during their campaign they'll use the platform to highlight the injustice done to us and our disappointment in the decision," he said.

Nawaz Sharif was sentenced in absentia to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and fined eight million pounds by an accountability court in one of the three corruption cases against him in the high-profile Panama Papers scandal. His daughter and co-accused Maryam was given seven years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of two million pounds, while Sharif's son-in-law Capt (retd) Muhammad Safdar was jailed for one year.

The court delivered the verdict after postponing it for four times in the Avenfield corruption case -- pertaining to the ownership of four flats in the posh Avenfield House in London.

Sharif, 68, is in London attending to his wife Kulsoom Nawaz who was diagnosed with throat cancer last year. The ruling came weeks before the general elections in Pakistan on July 25.

Islamabad-based accountability court judge Mohammad Bashir pronounced the verdict behind closed doors. The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecution team chief Sardar Muzaffar Abbasi provided details of the judgement.