During the Avenfield reference hearing on Wednesday, PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif’s son-in-law, Captain (retired) Muhammad Safdar, decided against producing any witnesses in his defence, because, he maintained, that the prosecution had failed to establish a case against him.
Safdar has been named in the reference alongside Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, and his brothers-in-law, Hassan and Hussain Nawaz.
A day earlier, he had told the court that he was a signatory of the trust deeds of offshore companies, Nielsen and Nescoll, while his wife Maryam was a trustee of the company.
Like Maryam, during his testimony, Safdar also claimed that he had been victimised and dragged into the case to exert pressure on Nawaz Sharif.
He said that the joint investigation team’s (JIT) decision to include him in the references, despite the fact that he was not named in Supreme Court’s April 20 judgement, showed that the JIT’s intentions were malafide.
When asked to disclose the source of the funds with which Maryam had allegedly bought the Avenfield apartments, he reiterated his stance that Maryam was not the beneficial owner of the property.
Safdar also told the court about his military career, from the time he joined the Pakistan Army to when he was posted as Nawaz’s security officer.
Referring to the events of the 1990s, Safdar said that his father-in-law had been wronged multiple times, first in 1993 by then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan and then in 1999 by former chief of army staff General Pervez Musharraf.
“Nawaz Sharif wisely saved the region from an imminent war but he could not save his own regime,” Safdar said, referring to the Kargil Operation that had sparked a tiff between Nawaz and Musharraf which eventually escalated into the infamous coup.
Safdar skipped most questions posed to him by deeming them ‘irrelevant’, and in the end, when asked if he wanted to add something, he simply claimed to be innocent.
Following the conclusion of Safdar’s testimony, the accountability court summoned JIT head Wajid Zia to appear on Thursday (today) to be cross-questioned by Nawaz’s counsel in connection with the Al-Azizia Steel Mills reference.
The court will hear final arguments on Avenfield reference on June 5.
Published in Daily Times, May 31st 2018.
