A divisional bench of the Islamabad High Court acquitted Nawaz Sharif in the Al-Azizia case on Tuesday.

The bench included Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Gul Hassan Aurangzeb and announced the decision a few minutes after it was reserved.

The court also rejected National Accountability Bureau’s plea to send the case back to the trial court and heard the case on merits.

Nawaz had been sentenced to seven years in prison in the case in 2018. The court had fined him Rs1.5 billion as well.

The trial court decision had said that the sources of income declared by Nawaz and his sons were disproportionate to the cost involved in setting up the Al-Azizia steel mills.

During the hearing NAB’s prosecutor told the court that its case on the analysis by Wajid Zia. However, Justice Aamer Farooq remarked that the document proved nothing and people could not be convicted on the basis of ‘conjecture’.

The hearing

Nawaz’s lawyer Amjad Pervaiz said that NAB had not presented a single piece of evidence to prove Nawaz’s ownership of the stell mill.

He also added that the burden of proof in the case was entirely on Bureau.

Pervaiz said that NAB had not submitted a single document in the case and the trial court’s judgement had instead relied on Hussain Nawaz’s interview and Nawaz Sharif’s speech in the assembly.

The lawyer also cited 13 cases to argue that the matter of ‘benami’ properties did not apply to the Al-Azizia case.

The bench told NAB’s prosecutor that he would have to prove that they would have to prove that the funds that were used to establish the steel mills were gained through corruption.

The prosecutor replied that the Joint Investigation Team led by Wajid Zia had established corruption and the Bureau’s case was based on its analysis.

However, the judge replied that the JIT had found no evidence of corrpution and the whole matter was built up on a ‘conjecture’.

Justice Farooq said that such cases rely on documentary evidence and none had been presented in the case so far. He added that the prosecution must have gathered some evidence when the case was being heard.

When the prosecutor said that photocopied documents had been made part of the record. However, the judge replied that photo copies could not be made of the court’s record.

After this the bench reserved its verdict, which was announced just after 4 pm.