INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam, were given a seven-year sentence by an anti-corruption court.Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif will be arrested upon landing at Lahore airport on Friday as he travels from London to appeal his conviction and face a 10-year jail
sentence handed down by an anti-corruption court last week.Sharif and his daughter Maryam, who was given a seven-year sentence by the same
court, won't be allowed to leave the airport, Information Minister Syed Ali Zafar said in broadcast comments
"He is convicted, so he has to be arrested first and can't be allowed to roam around in the city," he said.What promises to be a dramatic
return by Sharif before the July 25 national election follows a two-year corruption scandal that engulfed Pakistani politics after the leak
of the so-called Panama Papers showed his family used offshore accounts to buy high-end London apartments
The former premier was disqualified from the top job by the Supreme Court last July, his third ousting since the 1990s."Nawaz Sharif is
coming back to fulfill his promise to the masses," his younger brother Shehbaz said on Twitter
"He knows that he will be put behind bars."Lahore ArrestsThe Sharif family has consistently denied any wrong doing and has criticized the
judiciary's handling of his case
Sharif said the nation's powerful military -- which removed him in a 1999 coup -- has conspired to manipulate the vote against his Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz party in favor of his main political rival Imran Khan
On Wednesday, Sharif told reporters in London that the military's main spy agency has intimidated the PML-N's election candidates and has
told them to switch parties or run as independents.The armed forces, which have directly ruled Pakistan for almost half of its existence,
have repeatedly denied interfering in the election
Khan, a former national cricket captain, has also rubbished claims that he is a tool of the army's alleged attempts to bring a pliant
government to power.However, Mushahidullah Khan, the information secretary of Sharif's party, said in broadcast comments early Thursday that
hundreds of PML-N loyalists were being arrested in Lahore to prevent them from gathering at the airport.Punjab's provincial government has
denied allegations of victimization, though local television channels showed police placing shipping containers across the city to block
roads order to prevent protesters reaching the airport.(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent
staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
