Lahore: A senior Pakistani judge on Sunday denied being blackmailed into convicting ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for graft last year after the main opposition party showed secretly taped video that appeared to show him saying he was threatened over the case.
Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party presented the video at a specially called news conference on Saturday, saying it proved that Sharif, currently serving a seven-year sentence for corruption, had been wrongfully convicted and should be released.
In the secretly shot 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.
In a statement issued through the accountability court, Malik 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.
