With former prime minister Nawaz Sharif set to appear before the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in the Avenfield and Al-Azizia cases, the court’s Registrar’s Office Tuesday announced that it would issue limited security passes to lawyers and journalists to attend the all-important hearing scheduled to be held on Wednesday (today). The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo was sentenced to 10 years in the Avenfield reference for owning assets beyond means along with an additional one-year imprisonment for failure to cooperate with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in July 2018. Nawaz — who left for London in November 2019 for medical treatment following the Lahore High Court’s approval — returned to Pakistan on October 21 after a four-year self-imposed exile. Following his homecoming, the former premier filed two separate applications — contending that while he was abroad for medical treatment and the pending appeals were dismissed for non-prosecution — seeking the restoration of his appeals against his conviction in both references.
