Sindh govt may declare Shahbaz Sharif an absconder: Ayaz Soomro

He says that Shahbaz was released ‘mysteriously’ after being convicted in the hijacking case.

KARACHI:

Law minister Ayaz Somroo said on Saturday that the Sindh government is thinking of declaring Shahbaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Punjab chief minister, a fugitive.

Back in April 2000, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced Shahbaz and his brother Nawaz Sharif to life imprisonment for refusing to allow an aircraft carrying former army chief General Pervez Musharraf from landing at Jinnah International Airport. Around 198 other people were also onboard the flight in October 1999. The convictions against the Sharif brothers were subsequently overturned by the apex court.

However, Soomro claims the circumstances under which Shahbaz was released from the Landhi jail, where the Sharif brothers were sent after being convicted by anti-terrorism court, were ‘mysterious’. He said that Nawaz was shifted from Landhi to Adiyala jail, but the records did not indicate where and when Shahbaz was sent. Soomro said that the provincial government has asked law and prisons departments to explain why the Sharif brothers were released from jail at a time when they had yet to be acquitted.

“I call Shahbaz a missing prisoner involved in a high-profile case, because he managed to escape from jail. We do not care if he is the chief minister of Punjab. The jail records show that he is a prisoner who is still at large,” said Soomro. “We are thinking of giving advertisements in newspapers, asking about the whereabouts of Shahbaz Sharif and declaring him a fugitive. We will give him a chance to come back to Landhi jail,” he said. Soomro requested the apex court to take suo moto notice of the case as well as the fact that they were released from the Landhi jail without a court order.

‘PPP is against death sentence’

Soomro, who is also the minister for jails, said that the government was contemplating a law to convert the death penalty into life imprisonment, in which the convicted will be put behind bars for about 25 years. He said that the PPP-led government was not in favour of implementing death sentences.

Around 107 people sentenced to death have been languishing in 27 prisons in Sindh. Around 39 mercy appeals had been pending before President Asif Ali Zardari and most of the cases have been challenged in higher courts.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2012.