Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and daughter Maryam Nawaz were arrested after arriving in Lahore on Friday night, a week after being sentenced to prison in the Avenfield properties case.
The two arrived in Lahore from Abu Dhabi at 8:50pm after their flight was delayed for over two hours. They had left London a day earlier.
A National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team took Nawaz and Maryam in its custody from the aircraft, while their passports were confiscated by officials of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
Shortly afterwards, the two were boarded on a separate special plane which took off for Islamabad. The flight landed at the New Islamabad airport at around 10:35PM, after which the two were taken to the Adiala Jail in separate armoured personnel carriers escorted by with police convoys.
Meanwhile, a notification was issued by the Islamabad administration declaring the rest house at the Sihala Police training College in the capital as a sub-jail for keeping the two with immediate effect and until further orders.
It was unclear if the two would be kept at the Adiala Jail or the sub-jail in Sihala. But sources said the two might undergo medical examination and other formalities at Adiala before being shifted to Sihala.
Earlier on Friday night, accountability court judge Muhammad Bashir has signed arrest warrants for the former prime minister and his daughter.
The former three-time prime minister was sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison and slapped a £8 million fine (Rs1.3 billion) by an accountability court in Islamabad last week for “owning assets disproportionate to known sources of income”.
His daughter, Maryam, was sentenced to eight years with a £2 million fine (Rs335 million), while her husband, Capt (retd) Safdar, was handed a one-year prison sentence.
Nawaz’s sons, Hassan and Hussain, have been absconding and declared ‘proclaimed offenders’ in the case.
