Ending four days of defiance against their deportation, the wife and two daughters of former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, brother of exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, were yesterday expelled from Pakistan, officials said.
Nusrat, Rabia and Jaweria Shahbaz, were brought to Islamabad from their home town, Lahore, and put aboard a flight that left for Jeddah at 5.20pm.
They had been given permission in April to visit Lahore for two months but after the expiry of the period they refused to return to Saudi Arabia voluntarily and were therefore expelled, a government official said.
The three 'missing' women reappeared at their Model Town family house yesterday. As per the understanding reached between Hamza, Shahbaz Sharif's son and senior officials of the government, they were immediately taken to Islamabad for their onward journey to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Hamza and his brother Salman saw their mother and sisters off at Islamabad airport and returned to Lahore in the evening.
President General Pervez Musharraf exiled Sharif, Shahbaz, their parents and other members of the family to Saudi Arabia in December 2000, about a year after the military seized power.
According to the then military government the family undertook to live in exile for 10 years and refrain from indulging in political activity under an agreement mediated by Saudi royalty. Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), denies the family made any such agreement.
PML-N information secretary Siddiqul Farooq condemned the "forcible deporation" of the wife and daughters of Shahbaz Sharif. "This is a cruel action. While Pakistan has sheltered millions of Afghan refugees the government is denying members of a respected family of the country the right to live in their homeland," he said.
Farooq urged local and international human rights organisations to denounce the "blatant violation of human rights".
The Lahore High Court Bar Assocation passed a resolution condemning the expulsion.The Lahore High Court had yesterday dismissed a petition challenging the 'detention' of Nusrat and her four children for non-prosecution and non-compliance of court order.
The court on Monday had directed the bailiff to recover Nusrat and her children. But the bailiff could not take any action to recover them as the petitioner Ashtar Ausaf Ali did not deposit the required fee for deputing the bailiff.
The judge took strong notice of this and observed that the petitioner and other party leaders were "not poor people". As the court reconvened at 10 am, it was told that that Ashtar could not be contacted. After this submission, the court dismissed the petition.
A large number of PML-N workers were present in the court, shouting slogans in Nawaz Sharif's support.
Gulf News
