Nawaz Sharif moves high court seeking bail in Al-Azizia case
Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday moved the Islamabad High Court seeking bail on medical grounds in the Al-Azizia corruption case.
The Supreme Court earlier this month dismissed the 69-year-old three-time prime minister’s review petition seeking permanent bail on medical grounds and the permission to go abroad for treatment.
According to the reports, doctors recommended that Sharif’s condition is life-threatening. Tension and stress can prove to be threatening to his life, it added.Even Sharif’s blood and sugar levels have not normalised, the petition went on to add.
Sharif returned to the Kot Lakhpat jail on May 7 to serve his seven-year prison term in the case after the end of his six-week bail, which was granted to him on medical grounds with a condition that he would not leave Pakistan.
The petition stated that all members of the special medical board, along with doctors associated with doctors hospital Lahore, Sheikh Zayed Hospital Lahore and National Hospital Lahore as well as medical specialists from UK, USA and Switzerland were unanimous that Sharif’s treatment is not possible in jail premises.
The former premier, who has been serving a seven-year prison term at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail since December 24, 2018, was granted a six-week bail on March 26 to get medical treatment. However, Sharif filed a civil review petition against the order on April 27.
The petition requested the court to allow Sharif get medical treatment abroad, claiming that the former prime minister was suffering from acute anxiety and depression that would lead to ‘sudden death’.
It said the medical professionals seeing the former premier in Pakistan recommend that he should be treated by his regular practitioners in the United Kingdom. It also said that there was a difference between the apex court’s March 26 oral order and the written order.
However, a three-judge special bench, headed by Pakistan Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and comprising Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi, dismissed the petition.
