Disgraced former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif was ordered released from prison Wednesday, after serving less than three months of a 10-year sentence.
The Islamabad High Court suspended a corruption sentence against Sharif and his daughter Maryam. The two were ordered to pay bail of $5,000 each, and are expected to be freed from Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi later Wednesday.
Sharif and his daughter were arrested in July on their return to Pakistan from the UK a week after a court found them guilty in absentia of corruption-related charges and sentenced them to 10 and seven years in prison, respectively.
The former leader had returned to the country – leaving his wife’s sickbed – to support the ultimately unsuccessful election campaign of his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who took over the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) that Nawaz once led.
Corruption charges
Sharif was ordered to step down as prime minister by the country’s Supreme Court in 2017, after revelations about his family’s finances emerged in the Panama Papers.
The former leader was not named in the documents, but he was linked to offshore accounts and overseas properties owned by three of his adult children that were not declared on the family’s wealth statement.
In July, the country’s National Accountability Court found Sharif guilty on charges of corruption, and fined him $10.5 million in relation to the overseas properties.
Maryam, who had been widely seen as her father’s heir apparent, was also found guilty, as was her husband, Muhammad Safdar.
All three were barred from engaging in politics for 10 years and four properties in London were ordered to be confiscated by the Pakistani state, according to the July verdict.
