Former president and Co-Chairman Pakistan People’s Party Asif Ali Zardari has said those who have brought Imran Khan to power, now they have realized that they have made a mistake.
To a question asked by reporters whether the Imran Khan government would complete its five-year term, Zardari retorted, “Insha Allah, he won’t.”
A journalist asked him that PML-N supremo and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif sentenced Benazir Bhutto and Zardari himself mentioned the audio scandal. The journalist further said that today Maryam Nawaz was taking clue from that case, what he would like to say. On this, the former president said Maryam was like his daughters. “What should I say about her,” he added.
Zardari was talking to media after attending a hearing against him at an accountability court.
Earlier, the accountability court Islamabad on Tuesday granted interim bail to former president Asif Ali Zardari in the New York apartment case. The court approved interim bail of the former president for Rs five lac surety bond.
Asif Ali Zardari appeared in the accountability court along with his lawyers Farooq H. Naik, Arshad Tabraiz and Barrister Sheeraz.
The court granted interim bail to the PPP leader and adjourned further hearing of the case until November 23.
The NAB had served Asif Zardari a notice along with a questionnaire to provide information about his Belair apartment, 524 East 72nd Street, 37F, Manhattan, New York, United States.
He had subsequently obtained pre-arrest bail from the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to avoid his arrest by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
However, Asif Ali Zardari denied owning the expensive apartment in Manhattan. “I had sold out the apartment the same year I purchased it,” the sources quoted him as saying in the reply he filed through his lawyers.
Separately, the NAB on Tuesday pleaded the Islamabad High Court to grant it more time to complete its arguments in its petition challenging the acquittal of Zardari in two references dating back to 2014.
The court while accepting the request warned the anti-corruption body that it would be the last time that the court was granting NAB its
request.
The court said if the NAB did not present its arguments during next hearing, then the court would decide the case that very day.
A two-judge bench of the IHC comprising Chief Justice Athar Minullah and
Justice Amir Farooq heard the NAB petition against the acquittal of the
former president in the ARY Gold and Ursus Tractors references by the
accountability court.
At the outset of the hearing of the case, the NAB prosecutor sought one month’s more time to present his arguments. On this, the CJ said: “You must realize that these are 2014 appeals. How much more time you need?”
The prosecutor said that two new amended ordinances of the National Accountability Bureau had been promulgated, that’s why he needed time. Justice Farooq remarked what the amended NAB ordinances had to do with this case?
The court granted only two weeks’ time to the NAB prosecutor to complete his arguments.
