ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was deported to Saudi Arabia yesterday, hours after he had landed in Pakistan from seven years in exile, officials said.

About 4 hours after he arrived on a flight from London, Sharif was taken into custody and charged with corruption, but was then quickly spirited to another plane and flown out of Pakistan to Jeddah, a close aide to President Pervez Musharraf said.

Sharif arrived in the port city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, hours after he was deported.

His deportation came despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling last month that the two-time former premier in the 1990s had the right to return to Pakistan and that authorities should not obstruct him.

Sharif's brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who stayed behind in London, said their party would submit a petition to the court to challenge the deportation.

After arriving by a Pakistan International Airlines flight from London, Sharif was surrounded by black-uniformed commandos inside the plane then shifted to the airport's VIP lounge, where a senior investigator from Pakistan's anti-corruption body served an arrest warrant.

The investigator, Azhar Mahmood Qazi, said Sharif was being arrested on money-laundering and corruption charges stemming from a sugar mill business several years ago. Sharif was accused of laundering 1.2 billion rupees ($21.2 million), he said.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of Pakistan's ruling party, said Sharif had been given a choice of going into exile again or be arrested. He said Sharif had chosen detention but it emerged soon after Sharif was being flown out of the country to Saudi Arabia.

That scuppered his plans to travel in a grand motorcade to his home and political base in Lahore, about 290 km to the south of Islamabad, to kick-start his campaign against Musharraf.

On Saturday, the head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, urged Sharif to respect a 2000 agreement in which he promised to remain in exile for a decade. "It is here and signed," said Prince Muqrin, waving a copy of the agreement before reporters.

But in London Sharif claimed that he understood the deal, under which he escaped a sentence of life imprisonment, would lapse in 2005.

Agencies

(China Daily 09/11/2007 page1)