Maryam Nawaz: Pakistan’s leader of the opposition arrested

Maryam Nawaz arrested while visiting her father, the jailed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Maryam Nawaz Pakistan
Maryam Nawaz was arrested by the country's National Accountability Bureau [Aamir Qureshi/AFP]

Pakistan opposition leader Maryam Nawaz has been arrested by the country’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB), a spokesperson for her party said, the latest high-profile detention of a member of the Sharif political dynasty.

Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) vice-president was detained on Thursday while she was visiting her father, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifat a Lahore prison, local media reported.

“Maryam Nawaz has been arrested,” Marriyum Aurangzeb, a PML-N spokesperson told Reuters news agency.

Azma Bukhari, another PML-N spokesperson, told Reuters that “Maryam was arrested in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case”.

The case relates to a sugar mill owned by the family, which has dominated the country’s politics for three decades, and says the cases against it are politically motivated.

Nawaz, a three-time prime minister, is serving a seven-year term for corruption.

The family has been embroiled in several trials on corruption charges after the Supreme Court disqualified Nawaz from office in July 2017.

Maryam is one of the few opposition figures to openly criticise Prime Minister Imran Khan and Pakistan’s powerful military, accusing them in recent weeks of censoring rallies and press conferences held by her party.

NAB, the federal anti-corruption force, confirmed the arrests.

“They have been arrested but where they will be kept will be decided by our headquarters in Islamabad,” a spokesperson for the NAB in Lahore told Reuters.

Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies