The Islamabad High Court (IHC) overruled the objections raised by the registrar’s office to a petition filed by PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday, asking for annulment of the verdict in the Avenfield Apartment reference.
A two-judge IHC bench comprising Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani heard Maryam and her husband retired Captain Mohammad Safdar’s appeals against their conviction.
An an application has been filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) seeking hearing of their appeals on a daily basis.
The court overruled the objections to Maryam’s latest application and directed to fix it for hearing. It adjourned the hearing on all appeals for October 13.
Maryam’s counsel Irfan Qadir, during today’s hearing, refuted the claims that the PML-N leader was against the country’s armed forces. He called it a mere “misunderstanding”.
“Our [security] agencies are the best in the world and our judges are respectable,” he said.
It is pertinent to note that Maryam on Tuesday had filed a fresh application, along with “extremely relevant, simple and clear-cut facts”, with the IHC seeking annulment of the verdict in the Avenfield Apartment reference.
Earlier, the Accountability Court judge Mohammad Bashir had on July 6, 2018 convicted former PM Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and her husband retired Captain Mohammad Safdar in the Avenfield Apartment reference and handed them jail terms of 10, seven and one years, respectively, for owning illegal assets.
They had filed appeals in the IHC against the conviction. The court had on September 18 the same year suspended their sentences and released them on bail.
Maryam’s latest application was filed “in consequence of certain extremely relevant, simple and clear-cut facts which have come to light after the pronouncement of judgement and sentence” in the case.
“These facts which even otherwise are quite well-known are being brought to the notice of this honourable court for enabling it to decide this matter expeditiously, justly, fairly and in accordance with law,” the miscellaneous application filed through Advocate Irfan Qadir said.
The IHC registrar office, meanwhile, had raised two objections to Maryam’s new application. According to the registrar, Maryam had made the same plea in her application as she did in her primary appeal challenging her conviction in the Avenfield case.
The office further said “Maryam Nawaz can adopt fresh grounds in the appeal only with the court’s permission.”
Maryam in her application concluded that the entire proceedings that resulted in her conviction were a “classic example of outright violations of law and political engineering hitherto unheard of in the history of Pakistan”.
