Urdu/Eng/Nat
XFA
Pakistan's deposed
Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, was reported to be on a plane heading for
Saudi Arabia early on Sunday.
It had emerged that the country's military government pardoned and then exiled him.
It is more than a year since it toppled his administration in a coup.
"This decision has been taken in the best interest of the country and people of
Pakistan," the government said in an official statement carried by the state-run news agency.
There was no further explanation for why army ruler
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who overthrew
Sharif's elected government, would let him leave the country.
There was no
sign that he would ever be allowed to return.
His wife, Kulsoom said they were being forced to leave.
"Pakistan will never be far from our hearts," she said. "We pray that our countrymen will be prosperous and whenever
Nawaz Sharif's health is better we will come back."
Kulsoom said her husband needed immediate medical treatment and suffers from high blood pressure and a heart ailment.
"His face becomes pale and he grabs his chest while walking even up to the toilet," she said.
The government said Sharif's life sentence for hijacking and kidnapping had been commuted - convictions connected with the
October 1999 coup - as had a 14-year jail term for abuse of power.
Sharif still must forfeit property valued at $
100 million and pay a $
500,
000 fine.
Eighteen family members will be going to Saudi Arabia with Sharif.
They included Sharif's elderly parents, his three children and their families, as well as
his brother
Shahbaz, a former chief minister of Pakistan's powerful
Punjab province, his wife and daughter.
Also allowed to leave is Sharif's younger brother
Abbas and his two sons.
Abbas, who had been in jail on corruption charges, was released, said Mariam Sharif, the deposed prime minister's daughter.
Pakistan Muslim League officials said a member of the
Saudi royal family brokered
Sharif's release from prison and exile to Saudi Arabia.
Officials in Saudi Arabia were not available for comment.
As custodians of
Islam's holiest shrines, the
Saudis have a tradition of opening their doors for fellow Muslims seeking refuge.
Idi Amin, the exiled and brutal former dictator of
Uganda, was received by the Saudis in
1980, a year after he was ousted from his
East African homeland.
Sharif appointed
Javed Hashmi as new acting president of his party.
Hashmi told reporters that he would take his orders from the exiled Sharif.
In Sharif's hometown of
Lahore in eastern Punjab province, his elderly parents packed their belongings, Mariam Sharif said.
Earlier,
Pakistani Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood told
The Associated Press that Sharif - who has been held in a cell in a
16th-century fort - had asked permission to leave the country for medical treatment.
General Musharraf overthrew Sharif's government in a bloodless coup last year, accusing him of corruption and misrule after Sharif dismissed
Musharraf and tried to replace him with a junior general.
After the coup, the military government charged Sharif with ordering the hijacking of a plane carrying Musharraf.
Sharif argued that his actions only aimed to avert a coup that was already under way.
Frustrated by years of corruption and misrule by elected governments, most
Pakistanis welcomed the coup.
Corruption is a major issue in Pakistan, where four successive governments have been thrown out due to corruption since
1990.
SOUNDBITE: (Urdu)
No we are not escaping in the darkness of night someone has compelled us to leave the country. God has called us to that place.
Thank God , we are going there.
SUPER CAPTION:
Kulsoom Nawaz, wife of deposed
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
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- published: 21 Jul 2015
- views: 3712