Petition to seek return of Sharifs to Pakistan

Islamabad: A petition requesting the Supreme Court to order the government not to block the return of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz to Pakistan will be filed today.

The Central information secretary of Pakistan Muslim League-N, Ahasan Iqbal, told reporters the petition was due to be moved yesterday but it was delayed by a day as documents were yet to be collected.

The party decision to approach the top court is apparently linked to apprehensions that the government could repeat what it did in 2004 when Shahbaz Sharif was sent back from the Lahore airport after his arrival.

At that time the Supreme Court had ruled that no citizen could be barred from entering the homeland, but it did not save Shahbaz from immediate expulsion.

With the judiciary now seen to be more active and independent after the July 20 reinstatement of the chief justice by the top court, PML-N officials are hopeful the government would not be able to replay the deportation act.

Exile

The Sharif brothers were sent into exile for a decade in December 2001 under a deal the government said they had signed with the government.

In the past the government has all along insisted they could not come back to Pakistan before completing the exile period.

Denying any such deal, Nawaz Sharif has vowed, and more assertively in the changed situation in Pakistan, that he would return ahead of the general elections due this year.

The president of ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, told reporters here on Tuesday that the Sharif brothers "are not barred from returning to the country."