Former PM deported on return to Pakistan

The former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia within hours of arriving at Islamabad airport on Sept. 10. The airport drama was a major blow to Sharif's campaign to oust the current president, Pervez Musharraf, who deposed him in a 1999 coup and sent him into exile one year later. But the deportation will stoke public anger at Musharraf's increasingly authoritarian rule, and could trigger a fresh confrontation with the judiciary. Clashes have been reported between Sharif supporters and police in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Attock. Sharif's party vowed to launch an immediate appeal before the supreme court, which only two and a half weeks ago ruled that Sharif had an "inalienable" right of return to Pakistan. In the event, Sharif spent less than four hours on Pakistani soil. Dozens of police commandos surrounded his Pakistan International Airlines flight after it arrived from London. Earlier the authorities thwarted efforts by his supporters to reach the airport by sealing off roads, jamming mobile phone signals and arresting hundreds of people. A tense standoff started as Sharif refused to hand his passport to an immigration official who boarded the plane. A helicopter waited outside, its rotors turning. Ninety minutes later he was moved to a VIP lounge, accompanied by about 30 mostly foreign reporters, where a government's anti-corruption investigator showed him a charge sheet, fueling speculation that he was about to be arrested. The charges included an accusation that Sharif pocketed $21.2 million from the sale of a sugar mill business during his last term in office. But Sharif refused to sign the papers. Shortly afterwards he was hustled into a bus that took him to the helicopter, and then into a waiting plane. Officials in Saudi Arabia told Reuters that Sharif was expected to arrive in the Red Sea city of Jeddah later that day. The deportation solves one problem for Musharraf, who is battling to retain power in the face of swelling civilian opposition, but it may create many more. Legal experts said the deportation appeared to contravene the Aug. 23 supreme court ruling allowing Sharif to return home. Musharraf has been at loggerheads with the court since March when he unsuccessfully tried to sack the chief justice, Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League -- Nawaz (PML-N) party vowed to launch an appeal to the court, said Muhammad Iqbal, son of spokesman Ahsan Iqbal, who was arrested on his way to the airport. On Sept. 9, Iqbal told a press conference: "The government's knees are shaking…. General Musharraf is already defeated." But today defiance gave way to disarray as the military-led government clamped down hard on the party. "The situation is really messed up," said his son. "The majority of our leadership have been arrested. Our central secretariat was raided, the staff are gone and our phone lines have been cut." A former president of Pakistan, Rafiq Tarar, was among Sharif loyalists who said they had been roughed up before being taken into police custody. Now the mantle of leadership falls to Sharif's younger brother, Shahbaz, who bade him a tearful farewell at Heathrow airport. "This will be counted as the blackest day in Pakistan's history," Shahbaz told Geo television from London. "I do not have words to describe my grief." Before his arrest Sharif acknowledged that his return was a "risky course." But his aim was to "take Pakistan back to the rule of democracy", he told reporters on the plane. "Because unless we have this, we will continue to be in a state of mess, as we are today." The crisis has dragged the government of Saudi Arabia ever deeper into Pakistani politics. On Sept. 8 the head of the Saudi intelligence services, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, arrived in Pakistan, where he urged Sharif to respect an earlier promise to stay away until 2010. "It is here and signed," said Prince Muqrin, waving a copy of the agreement before reporters.