ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday resumed hearing into a plea filed by Captain (r) Safdar against his conviction in the Avenfield corruption reference.
A two-member bench of the IHC, comprising Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, heard the case.
As the proceedings started, petitioner’s lawyer Amjad Pervez argued that a plea to suspend punishment can be accepted if the prison sentence is less than five years. Justice Farooq noted this was the reason that Captain (r) Safdar’s petition had been separated from those filed by his wife Maryam and father-in-law Nawaz Sharif.
Safdar’s lawyer contended that while the court had ordered the sentences of all three convicted in the case to begin simultaneously, this was not the case for his client who had remained in the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) custody for a day. Pervez further said that the accountability court’s ruling in the Avenfield case was based on a forged signature on a trust deed. “The expert witness had admitted that the Calibri font was available in 2005,” he said. To this, Justice Farooq remarked that it would be better if the case’s merits were not discussed.
The IHC bench ordered the petitioner to make the accountability court a party to the case as the plea was against the latter’s ruling.
After NAB objected to Safdar’s petition against conviction, the hearing was adjourned till Monday.
The Sharif family had petitioned against their convictions in the Avenfield reference. Nawaz had also filed a plea to transfer the Al-Azizia and Flagship Investment corruption references from the court of Judge Muhammad Bashir to another accountability court.
During Tuesday’s proceedings, the court had accepted Nawaz Sharif’s plea. The hearing of Maryam and Nawaz’s petition against conviction in the Avenfield case was adjourned till August 13.
Published in Daily Times, August 9th 2018.