Government issues passport to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif

ISLAMABAD: The government has issued a new passport to Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif who is currently based in London, reported the local media on Tuesday, while removing his name from the exit control list.
Sharif was found guilty in a corruption reference by an accountability court in Pakistan and sent to prison for 10 years in 2018. He began his prison term but was later released on a temporary bail on medical grounds.
Sharif left Pakistan in November 2019 to seek medical treatment in London. However, he did not return to his country since then.
Pakistan’s former interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed announced in December 2020 the government would cancel Sharif’s diplomatic passport.
Now the country’s new government, led by the former prime minister’s younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, has issued him a regular Pakistani passport.
“The former prime minister’s new passport with a 10-year validity was processed in the urgent category,” reported Dawn newspaper. “As of now, the passport’s status in the immigration and passports department’s system is ‘active’.”
The newspaper informed that the country’s new prime minister had asked the relevant authorities to issue his elder brother a diplomatic passport even before appointing his cabinet.
The decision was also endorsed by Pakistan’s new interior minister Rana Sanaullah who said it was “unfortunate” that a person who had served his country three times as prime minister had been “deprived of national citizenship.”
Last year in August, Sharif had challenged the UK Home Department’s decision to extend his stay in Britain on “medical grounds” by filing an appeal in an immigration tribunal.
His daughter, Maryam Nawaz, also moved a petition in the Lahore High Court recently to get her passport back ahead of her planned travel to Saudi Arabia for Umrah.
She was also convicted with her father and sentenced to seven years in prison on corruption charges.
The Sharifs have always denied involvement in any wrongdoing, describing the cases against them as politically motivated.