Supreme Court Acquits Nawaz Sharif of Plane Hijacking/Terrorism Charges

The Supreme Court of Pakistan, on Friday (July 17, 2009), acquitted PML-N chief and ex prime minister of the country Nawaz Sharif of the plane-hijacking case, thus enabling Mr. Sharif again for returning to parliamentary politics. The Supreme Court’s decision also cleared the eight plus years old stigma of plane-hijacking/terrorism tied to Mr. Sharif’s personal and political identity.

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Nawaz Sharif had been sentenced to life imprisonment on April 06, 2000, on the charges of hijacking a plane that was carrying about 200 passengers including the army chief and then chief executive of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf. In sentencing Mr. Sharif to life imprisonment, the anti-terrorist High Court in Sindh had turned down a state appeal demanding Mr. Sharif’s execution. The convicted leader, however, did not file an appeal against the sentence then, on the grounds that the judiciary at that time was not independent.

It had hardly been a year after Mr. Sharif was sent to Attock Fort, declared as sub-jail, to serve the sentence, when the Saudi Arabian government cut a deal with General Pervez Musharraf on getting Mr. Sharif to Saudi Arabia on the conditions that he wouldn’t leave Saudi Arabia and wouldn’t return to Pakistan in the following ten years. However, with the shift in the political scene in Pakistan, these conditions were stepped over and Mr. Sharif returned to Pakistan to take charge of his party’s affairs.

The Supreme Court also condoned the eight years of lapse in Mr. Sharif’s petition against the court’s decision, which should have been filed within a month of the sentence declaration. The reason as stated by the court was that Mr. Sharif had been prevented from returning to Pakistan when he came to Islamabad from London after the end of his exile. The latest court verdict also considered the delayed FIR that was filed against Mr. Shairf after a month of the hijacking incident.