The deposed premier also faces detention for alleged involvement in corruption on the duo’s likely arrival home next week after a seven-year exile.
Shahbaz Sharif, former chief minister of Punjab province, is accused of masterminding a fake encounter in which five people, members of extremist sectarian groups, were killed during his tenure between 1997 and 1999. An anti-terrorism court in Lahore issued the arrest warrant against Mr Shahbaz in connection with the murder case.
He has vowed to return to Pakistan on September 10 along with his brother, media reports here said.
A man named Saaduddin had approached the court, claiming that his two sons, who were among the five people shot dead in the fake police encounter, were killed on the instructions of Shahbaz. In a related development, an anti-corruption court in Rawalpindi hearing graft cases against Mr Nawaz Sharif and his family members agreed with Deputy Prosecutor General Juslfikar Bhutta that the power to arrest the Sharifs was vested with the National Accountability Bureau. Mr Bhutta, who wanted the arrest warrants against the Sharifs, told Judge Khalid Mehmood Chaudhry that according to rules of NAB ordinance, its chairman had the powers to issue arrest warrants. The judge okayed it, saying that it was very much within the law. The court adjourned the hearing to September 13.
Ahsan Iqbal, central spokesman of Sharif’s PML-N party, said the former prime minister, who was toppled in a bloodless military coup by Musharraf in 1999, would return, despite facing prospects of arrest.
The main problem for the Sharifs is that the Saudi government, which provided them asylum for six years, reportedly expressed unhappiness over the deposed premier’s plans to return home. By this, he would be violating his “pledge” to stay out of the country for 10 years.
Sharif, who along with his family spent six years in a royal palace in Jeddah, later opted to move to London, where he currently lives.
The public expression of the Saudi unhappiness has triggered speculation that the Sharifs could be deported back to Jeddah on their arrival.
BHUTTO WARNS MUSHARRAF
With her much-touted power sharing deal with President Pervez Musharraf yet to materialise, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto has warned the general that failure to reach an agreement with her could prompt a “people’s uprising” in the country. “It is upto the government to decide if it wants a peaceful transition to democracy through free and fair elections. Otherwise, it has to face people’s power and a Ukrainian-style Orange Revolution in Pakistan,” Ms Bhutto told a paper in a telephone interview from Dubai. Protests had erupted in Ukraine in 2005, following allegations that the government had rigged elections and ended only after Opposition Leader Viktor Yushchenko took over.
