Prime Minister Imran Khan Saturday said just like Sicilian mafia, the Pakistani mafia also uses multiple tactics to pressurise the state institutions and the judiciary to protect their billions of rupees laundered and stashed abroad.
In a tweet, the prime minister shared a media report on a testimony of former Italian president Giorgio Napolitano in a case of bombings and violence in Italy involving mafia to coerce the government in 1990.
The report quoted Giorgio Napolitano saying that the attacks had been a form of extortion or outright pressure aimed at destabilizing the entire system. “Linking the case with the situation in Pakistan, the prime minister remarked, “In a similar vein to the “Sicilian mafia”, the Pakistani mafia uses tactics of bribe, threat, blackmail and begging to pressurise state institutions and judiciary in order to protect their billions of money laundering stashed abroad.” As Prime Minister Imran Khan drew parallels with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the ‘Sicilian mafia’, party’s vice president Maryam Nawaz lashed out at him, saying the former pressurises judges into targeting and punishing his political opponents.
Maryam replied to the prime minister’s tweet saying that the prime minister himself was a part of the same mafia that used institutions to settle scores with his opponents and defaced and maligned them in the process. “You’re a part of the mafia that pressurises judges into targeting & punishing your political opponents. It is you who used the institutions to settle scores with your opponents & defaced & maligned them in the process. Shame on you,” she posted on her Twitter handle.
Maryam hits back, saying prime minister himself is part of mafia that pressurises judges into targeting and punishing his political opponents
Meanwhile, PML-N Spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb also hit out at the government, claiming that Prime Minister Imran Khan had threatened judges to get verdicts in his favour. Talking to the media in Islamabad, she said that, “You are the real Sicilian mafia in the country … look how you have made the lives of Pakistanis miserable.”
She said the people are fed up with the government’s poor performance, adding, “The selected prime minister first stole the people’s mandate and is now destroying the economy.”
Although the prime minister did not name any individual or political party, his observation comes a day after accountability judge Arshad Malik claimed in an affidavit that he was offered a Rs500 million cash bribe by the son of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Hussain Nawaz, who demanded that the judge resign on the grounds that he ‘could no longer deal with the guilt of having convicted’ Nawaz under duress in the Al-Azizia/Hill Metal Establishment reference in December 2018.
On July 6, PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz had opened a Pandora’s box with a startling claim that judge Malik had ‘confessed’ that he had been ‘pressurised and blackmailed’ to convict her father in the Al-Azizia reference. The next day the judge had denied the allegation and being under any pressure, but admitted that Butt was an acquaintance.
