Hasan blames govt for Nawaz's poor health
NICOSIA, Dec 10: Hasan Sharif received a surprise phone call late on Saturday at his London home. It was his father Nawaz Sharif, telling his youngest son that he had just been freed from a military prison and was on his way to Saudi Arabia.
"It's been a wonderful time. I had no idea," said Hasan, 24, who hopes to join his father in Jeddah in the coming week. "I just want to hug him."
But the son does not have forgiving words for Chief Executive Gen Pervez Musharraf.
"I do not think Musharraf released my family as a goodwill gesture. If so, he would have done it earlier. The regime is illegitimate," he said in a telephone interview.
"He tried to keep my family in the gallows as long as possible."
The shock jolted Hasan, the only Sharif not living in Pakistan, from his life as a young London university student, and turned him into his father's crusader overnight.
Sharif's release is the fruit of a year's lobbying by his family, which have seen Hasan shuttle around the world, meeting government officials in the United States and Britain as well as the royal families of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
For the last two months, Hasan had hoped that his father might be released. "But it kept getting delayed and delayed, and now by the grace of God, it has worked very well," said Hasan.
He credited members of the Saudi royal family with being the crucial force in his father's case.
"It was a long struggle by our allies both inside and outside Pakistan. The coutries that helped us were Qatar and the UAE, as well as the US and UK, but the main role was played by Saudi Arabia," said Hassan, who would not identify the key Saudi figures.
In their conversation on Saturday, Hasan said his father told him that he was in good health.
Hasan clarified that his father had not suffered a heart attack last Monday. "It wasn't actually a heart attack. Sometimes his heart skips a beat," he said, adding that his father suffered from the condition while in office.
Hasan blamed the government for his father's recent poor health. "Heart disease is common in my family. When my father was in jail he had a lot of anxiety. Problems were bound to happen.
"The only thing the regime could do was to torture him mentally by putting as many of his family members in jail as possible."
But last Monday's heart incident finally let the Saudis obtain Sharif's freedom, Hasan claimed.
"When the issue of his health came up, and they (the government) had not been releasing unindicted family members from jail, this raised a lot of concern in the Arab and Saudi community in pushing for his release," said Hasan.
Hasan also affirmed the family's denial that Sharif had not sought clemency from the government.
He added that the Sharifs would most likely stay as guests of the Saudi royal family in Jeddah, and that they would retreat from view for the next month.
"Let the dust settle and see what my father decides as a politician, father and family member," he said. "The whole family is getting together again after almost a year-and-a-half. They shall think about what they did in the past and what to do in the future."
But Hasan vowed the family would return home some day. "We will not run away from Pakistan," he said.-AFP
( Dawn, Dec 11, 2000 )
