Blackmail saga gets murkier as judge denies being pressured to jail Sharif

In a new twist to the judge blackmail saga, a senior Pakistani judge on Sunday denied being blackmailed into convicting ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Former prime minster was convicted for graft last year.

On Saturday Nawaz Sharif's party PML-N had showed secretly taped video that appeared to show the judge saying that he was threatened over the case.

In the video, judge Arshad Malik, a senior judge on the accountability court, is seen telling a man described by PML-N officials as a party sympathiser that unidentified individuals had confronted him with compromising video footage to pressure him into convicting.

He appears to tell the man that "they called me to a place and put on a film on a TV and left the room. After three or four minutes later, they entered the room and said take it easy. After watching the movie, I thought of committing suicide."

After the video was released, PML-N said that the video proves that Sharif, currently serving a seven-year sentence for corruption, had been wrongfully convicted and should be released.

However, in a statement issued through the accountability court, Malik on Sunday said that his comments in the video were pieced together and presented out of context and he had never faced intimidation to rule against Sharif.

"I want to make it clear that I was neither directly or indirectly intimidated, nor was I influenced by greed," he said, adding that he had faced pressure from the former prime minister's allies not to convict.

"During the hearing of the cases against Nawaz Sharif and his family, I was repeatedly offered bribes by their representatives and also given threats of serious consequences if I did not cooperate."

A PML-N spokeswoman said Malik did not deny the conversation recorded on tape had taken place and asked why, if he had faced pressure from Sharif's camp, he had not reported it previously.

"Why did he not report to the Supreme Court supervisory judge about threats, bribes and blackmail?" she said in messaged comments.

Maryam Nawaz, Nawaz Sharif's daughter and vice president of the PML-N, said the video showed the judge had been intimidated into passing the conviction against her father.

"This evidence is enough to prove Nawaz Sharif is innocent and he should be released immediately," she said during Saturday's press conference.

Nawaz Sharif is currently serving a seven year sentence for being unable to prove the source of income that had led to his ownership of a steel mill in Saudi Arabia. Under Pakistani law, this is taken to prove corruption.

Pakistan information minister Fidous Ashiq Awan called the video an attack on the entire judiciary by the PML-N and said a forensic audit of the video would be conducted.

"The judge's conversation and the contents' credibility will be evaluated. Are they real or tampered?" she said.

Reuters