ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has decided to file yet another petition in the Supreme Court against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to seek an investigation into allegations of receiving money from Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden for the election campaign of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) during the 1990s.

Talking to Dawn on Monday, PTI spokesman and lawyer Fawad Chaudhry said his party had completed the process of internal discussions and decided after reviewing all legal aspects of the case to file a petition against the prime minister and his party for “conspiring against democracy in the country after receiving money from foreign forces”.

The PTI announcement comes four days after Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar asked political parties to maintain respect of the institution by not washing the political dirt in the laundry of the judiciary.

“There is an old doctrine from the US that the political dirt should not be washed in the laundry of the judiciary so that the dignity of institutions is not hurt,” the chief justice had observed during the hearing of a petition filed by PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi seeking disqualification of PTI chief Imran Khan and secretary general Jahangir Khan Tareen for non-disclosure of their assets, existence of their offshore companies and the PTI being funded from abroad.

Last week, the PTI had announced that it had decided to file a petition in the Supreme Court seeking implementation of the famous Asghar Khan case judgement.

Fawad Chaudhry said that the legal team of the PTI had started preparing a draft of the application after receiving directives from the party leadership and it would soon submit it before the Supreme Court.

He said that the time had come that the nation should be told about secret links of Mr Sharif with foreign forces.

The charge that Mr Sharif had received money from the Al Qaeda chief had been in the air over the past two decades and the issue resurfaced last year when Shamama Khalid, the wife of a former operative of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in her book claimed that Mr Sharif had “received funding from Osama bin Laden to contest elections against Ms Benazir Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) after the end of Zia regime”.

The book claims that Mr Sharif’s pledge of introducing an Islamic system had attracted her husband Khalid Khawaja as well as Osama.

“But even though the Al Qaeda head honcho funded Nawaz Sharif heavily, the latter backed out from his promises after coming into power,” claims the author reportedly in her book.

Published in Dawn, May 09th, 2017