Daily Times

Lahore: Lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi feels the Panama Leaks case was not handled well at the trial stage by the Sharif family’s legal team.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Times, he said that the team not only failed to provide defence but also lacked a strategy to handle the issue in its entirety. “This lack of strategy brought them to the point where attention drifted on Nawaz Sharif,” he said.

Soofi said that the ruling party’s members should have refrained from politicising the issue.

He was of the opinion that despite initial confidence demonstrated by the Sharifs, they were unable to provide sufficient documentation to the court because they never expected the case to go that far. Soofi said the PML-N government’s argument that no one, including the judges who disqualified Sharif, fulfilled the requirements laid down in Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution was essentially a political one. “They failed to come up with a legal argument that could survive the scrutiny of judges,” he added.

Commenting on the ousted PM’s outburst against the Supreme Court, he said that it was not an ideal strategy. He shared that former President Asif Ali Zardari’s lawyer Farooq H Naek, who was able to get his client acquitted in corruption cases, once told him that forming a legal strategy and following it in silence without making political noise was the key to success in such cases.

In response to a question about the recently passed Electoral Reforms Law, Soofi said the content of the legislation was excellent. “It has an institutional outlook to it because it has been prepared after years of hard work. But it appears that the law was hurriedly passed to pave the way for Nawaz Sharif’s reinstatement as the PML-N president,” he said, “It is unfortunate that it had to go to a point where the law became individual-specific.”

On reports about ‘mainstreaming’ of banned terror groups, he said there was a need to clearly define the process.

“If the process is meant to give these terror groups an escape route, it will certainly serve to radicalise the society. But if they have been diverted to political direction in a bid to stop them from violence and extremist activities, then it might be significant,” he opined.

Published in Daily Times, October 21^st 2017.