Nawaz Sharif in Adiala jail
Islamabad, July 14 (IBNS): Disgraced former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was in custody on Saturday, a day after the wild bomb attacks in Pakistan's troubled election campaign that left 133 people killed and more than 300 wounded, media reports said.
A suicide bomber killed 128 people, including an election candidate at Mastung in the southwestern province of Baluchistan on Friday, while five others died in another blast in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also in the northwest.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Baluchistan attack.
The attacks came hours before Sharif returned from London along with his daughter Maryam to be arrested and face a prison sentence on corruption charges. Maryam Sharif faces seven years in jail.
Reports quoted Mushahidullah Khan, a spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, as saying on Saturday that the ex-prime minister and his daughter were being held in Adiala Jail, located outside the capital of Islamabad.
Khan said Sharif will appeal his conviction and apply for bail before Monday. He faces two additional corruption trials, both of which will be held inside the jail, Khan said.
Minutes after landing at the Lahore airport, Sharif and his daughter Maryam were arrested by a team of National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
Geo News quoted a notice issued by the Ministry of Law and Justice as saying that the accountability court would conduct a trial of references against Nawaz and others at the Adiala Jail.
Nawaz and his daughter were convicted of disproportionate assets by an accountability court in Pakistan on July 6 2018.
On Friday night, accountability court judge Justice Muhammad Bashir signed the arrest warrants for the father-daughter duo.
Last week, an accountability court in Islamabad had sentenced the former three-time premier to a total of 11 years in prison and slapped a £8-million fine (Rs1.3-billion) for "owning assets disproportionate to known sources of income".
His daughter, Maryam, on the other hand, was sentenced to eight years with a £2-million fine (Rs335-million), while her husband, Captain (retd) Safdar, was handed a one-year prison sentence.
Sharif's sons, Hassan and Hussain, have been absconding and declared 'proclaimed offenders' in the case.
Sharif’s son-in-law Muhammad Safdar was sentenced to 1 year in prison for not cooperating with the investigation.
Nawaz Sharif was disqualified for life from holding political office or contesting elections.
Before their arrival, the Pakistan administration had ordered a complete shut down of mobile phones in the city from 3 pm to 12 am.
Their return and arrest happened just days before the 25 July general elections in Pakistan.
The father-daughter duo was earlier in London to see Nawaz’s ailing wife Kulsoom Nawaz.
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