ISLAMABAD: Deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, and Captain(retd) Safdar Awan filed an appeal against the verdict in the AvenfieldProperties corruption reference in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday.
An accountability court had sentenced Nawaz to a total of 11 years inprison and slapped a £8 million fine (Rs1.3 billion) in the corruptionreference while his daughter Maryam was sentenced to eight years with a £2million fine (Rs335 million). Additionally, Nawaz’s son-in-law Capt (retd)Safdar was given a one-year sentence without any fine.
The appeal — that highlights the legal flaws in the Avenfield judgement —asks for the accountability court’s verdict to be declared null and voidand the three convicts to be released on bail.
The appeal states that Panamagate Joint Investigation Team (JIT) head andprosecution’s star witness Wajid Zia himself accepted that a response tothe mutual legal assistance (MLA) request was not received. It further saidthat levelling allegations without receiving a response to the MLA was malafide.
Legal counsels of the convicts have contended that the prosecution’switness Robert Radley not only stated that Calibri font was available fortesting purposes, he admitted to having downloaded and used the Calibrifont which was available as pre-release of Windows Vista known as BETA-1since the year 2005 while simultaneously admitting that he was neither acomputer expert nor an IT expert or a computer geek