ISLAMABAD, July 16 (TNS): Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, and Captain (retd.) Safdar Awan filed an appeal against the verdict in the Avenfield Properties corruption reference in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday.
The accountability court (ATC) had sentenced Nawaz for 10 years in prison and slapped a Rs1.3 billion fine in the corruption reference while his daughter Maryam was sentenced to 7 years with a Rs335 million fine, in the verdict of July 6.
In addition to this, son-in-law of Nawaz Sharif, Capt(retd) Safdar was given a one-year sentence without any fine.
The appeal filed against the verdict, highlights legal flaws in the Avenfield verdict, asks for the accountability court’s verdict to be declared null and the three convicts to be released on bail.
The appeal states that Panamagate Joint Investigation Team (JIT) head and prosecution’s star witness Wajid Zia himself accepted that a response to the mutual legal assistance request was not received.
Legal counsels of the convicts have contended that the prosecution’s witness Robert Radley not only stated that Calibri font was available for testing purposes, he admitted to having downloaded and used the Calibri font which was available as pre-release of Windows Vista known as BETA-1 since the year 2005 while simultaneously admitting that he was neither a computer expert nor an IT expert.
