As former Premier Nawaz Sharif was unceremoniously sent out of the country to Saudi Arabia, his wife Khulsoom Nawaz on Monday said she would shortly return to Pakistan to challenge President Pervez Musharraf’s military regime.

Condemning the government’s action, Khulsoom, who initially led Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League after her husband was arrested following a military coup by Musharraf in 1999 until they were sent to exile in Jeddah in 2000, said she would arrive in a few days time to take up the cudgels on her husband’s behalf.

“I will soon return and see how they (government) can stop. I want to come in few days time,” she told Geo TV in a telephone interview from London.

She said the “panic” reaction of the Pakistan government by “sealing the country” was proof that it was afraid of Sharif’s presence.

“The government reaction has proved that he is a very big leader and the government is deeply afraid of him,” Khulsoom, who currently lived in London, said.

She along with Sharif and the 20-member family were deported to Jeddah in 2000. They later shifted to London after spending six years of isolated life in a royal palace in Jeddah as part of the exile “deal”.
She said she heard about Sharif’s deportation only through TV channels and added that her husband has left his brother Shahbaz behind in London to carry on with the “fight”.

She last spoke to Sharif on a satellite phone which he carried but could not establish contact with him after he was deported, Khulsoom said.

Khusloom said no family member of Sharif travelled with him.

Sharif’s brother Shahbaz, who was asked to stay back in London in a last-minute decision, said he was not aware that Sharif was deported.

He asked the same TV channel whether it was correct that his brother was sent back to Jeddah.

Expressing shock and dismay over the deportation, he said: “I can not express my sadness and anger. A dictator (Musharraf) is sitting and not afraid of any law. How can we say we are a democratic country”.

Asked whether he was disappointed that the Supreme Court has not intervened despite a senior leader of party, Kwaja Muhammad Asif, approaching Chief Justice Iftikar M Chaudhry, he said it was a constitutional right to expect a legal remedy and called on people to rise and fight for political rights.

EMOTIONAL HOMECOMING
Emotional homecoming for Nawaz Sharif
Islamabad, pti: Setting foot on home soil after spending seven years in exile, an emotional former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday said he was uncertain about his fate.

Wiping away tears as soon as the aircraft touched down at the airport, Sharif moved out of the business class and sat among his supporters in the economy class.

He said it was an “emotional moment” for him.

“I have a great feeling that I will be able to set foot on Pakistani soil,” he told reporters before he was allowed to disembark from the PIA aircraft that brought him here from London.

Condemning the arrest of the leaders of his party and allied outfits, he said “going by what is happening, it seems that the government has not learnt from its mistakes. It is repeating the same mistakes that the previous dictator had done”.

Talking about his brother Shahbaz, whom he asked to remain in London at the last minute, the PML-N leader said: “I do not know what treatment would be meted out to me. At least Shahbaz would be there to look into the matter”.