Sharif, Maryam will return to Pak within 10 days to appeal against court verdict

Pakistan's deposed premier Nawaz Sharif's daughter Maryam today said she and her father would return to Pakistan before the expiry of the 10-day deadline given by an an anti-graft court to file an appeal against their sentence in a corruption case.

The Islamabad Accountability Court yesterday sentenced 68-year-old Sharif to 10 years in jail for owning assets beyond income and one year for not cooperating with the anti-corruption authority, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in one of the three corruption cases against him in the Panama Papers scandal.

Maryam, considered to be Sharif's political heir, was given seven years for abetment, and one year for non-cooperation with the NAB.

When reporters in London today asked Maryam whether she had been informed by her lawyers that they need to surrender themselves within 10 days to get any sort of relief, she said: "We will go back before that (10 days) anyway."
"Such an explanation may not have changed the course of the law against the Sharifs, but it could have set a welcome and much-needed political precedent of transparency and self-accountability."