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Journalism of Courage
In an apparent reaction to the recent criticism by deposed PM Nawaz Sharif against President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan government has ordered his brother Shahbaz Sharif’s wife and daughters to leave the nation and join the exiled family in Jeddah.
‘‘They will be sent today,’’ Pakistan Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said reacting to reports of police laying seize to the residence of Sharif’s relatives in Lahore to find Shahbaz’s wife Nusrat and two daughters Rabia and Jaweria. Sharif had accepted a deal with the military in 2000 that they would not return.
Hayat said that Shahbaz’s wife and daughters were allowed to return as the family wanted the daughters to get married and asked for two months time. Now it is over three months, he said. The sudden government action was apparently the fallout of Sharif’s recent interview in which he castigated Musharraf for scuttling the Lahore peace process and held him squarely responsible for the Kargil conflict.
The ‘‘deportation’’ of the three was delayed after PM Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali ‘‘reversed’’ the order to send them yesterday, The Nation reported. Jamali even phoned Shahbaz’s son Mian Hamza to assure him that his family members would not be forced to leave.
But the prime minister’s orders were superseded following direct orders from Washington where Musharraf is on a visit, the daily said.
