ISLAMABAD, 12 May 2004 — Pakistan deported Shahbaz Sharif soon after he landed at Lahore airport yesterday, putting him on a plane to Saudi Arabia. Shahbaz had arrived at the Iqbal International Airport aboard a scheduled flight from Abu Dhabi yesterday evening in a dramatic challenge to President Pervez Musharraf, the general who overthrew his brother, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Shahbaz was deported aboard an unscheduled Pakistan International Airlines flight to Jeddah where members of the Sharif family, including Nawaz, have been living in exile.
Senior Lahore police official Tariq Saleem Dogar said police served Shahbaz with an arrest warrant before moving him to the other plane. He was in Pakistan for less than 90 minutes but a journalist accompanying Shahbaz said he kissed the ground as soon as he stepped off the first aircraft.
A Pakistani journalist said Shahbaz and journalists traveling with him were surrounded by commandos on arrival. He said journalists, including a British Broadcasting Corporation cameraman, were manhandled and had films taken from cameras.
The chairman of the pro-Sharif Pakistan Muslim League faction Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, of which Shahbaz is president, called the deportation “highly condemnable”.
Qasim Zia, an official of the Pakistan People’s Party of Benazir Bhutto, another prime minister in exile, said the Supreme Court had ruled Shahbaz should be allowed to return.
