Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday admitted that letting former PM Nawaz Sharif leave the country was a “mistake” by his government.
Citing Khan’s interview with ARY News on Thursday, Dawn reported that the Prime Minister hinted that the government was pressurised into sending Nawaz Sharif abroad, saying that the reports presented to the government suggested that the PML-N supremo was severely ill.
Sharif, who has been convicted for corruption, had left for the UK in November last year for medical treatment.
Khan further said the federal cabinet had held hours of debate over whether the government should let Sharif leave on humanitarian grounds.
He said that the court had declared that the government would be held responsible if anything happens to Sharif. Further, PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif had submitted indemnity bonds worth Rs 7 billion, promising Nawaz Sharif would return to the country, Khan added.
“Now we feel embarrassed. Now he [Nawaz] has started doing politics [from] there as well and, when you see him, it seems like there is nothing [wrong] with him,” Khan was quoted as saying by Dawn.
“We did not give and NRO, we tried our best to do what we could, but the medical opinion presented to us was that if we didn’t do anything, he [Nawaz] could die, that he might not even reach London. This is what we were told and after that we would have been held responsible. So after that we sent him in good faith.”
The Prime Minister said that a “royal” had asked the government to let Sharif leave.
Refusing to take the name of the royal person, he said: “they (Sharifs) do have connections abroad”.
“But they (the royal) did not assert it, they said it in a very polite manner. It wasn’t like ‘if you don’t do this, this will happen’.”
However, Imran Khan was quick to add that had the medical opinion not suggested Sharif’s “life in danger” he would not have allowed the former PM to leave the country.