Islamabad – Staff Report:
The passport of former PM Nawaz Sharif is expected to expire Monday night at 12am. The PML-N founder is currently in London for his medical treatment.
Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed said that the government will not extend his passport. If he wants to come to Pakistan, then he must submit a request, and then emergency travel documents will be issued to him, he said.
No one from the PML-N’s team has, however, contacted the Pakistan High Commission over the matter.
According to experts, Nawaz can stay in London even after his passport expires. He will just have to provide solid proof that he is really sick.
Nawaz, a three-time former premier, arrived in the UK on November 2019 for medical treatment.
He was sentenced to seven and 10 years in prison in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Avenfield flats references. The former premier’s sentence in the Al-Azizia reference was suspended. He has filed an appeal seeking its annulment.
NAB has filed appeals to increase his sentence to 14 years in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills case. It seeks an end to the suspension of Nawaz’s sentence in the Avenfield case too.
In October 2019, the IHC had granted Nawaz bail on humanitarian grounds and allowed him to travel to London. His bail expired in February. Last month, the IHC issued non-bailable arrest warrants for Nawaz. But the warrants were not received by the ex-premier.
What happens after Nawaz Sharif’s passport is cancelled?
Once Nawaz’s passport is cancelled, the legality of his stay in the United Kingdom becomes tenuous.
Your visa is granted on your passport but once you don’t have a passport anymore, your legal stay becomes uncertain, he said.
Once a country withdraws or cancels its passport it says that this citizen is no longer a valid document holder, he explained. The UK doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Pakistan but once his passport is cancelled, it makes Pakistan’s petition for Nawaz’s deportation stronger.
We will now have to see what the UK does, he said.
