Wajid Zia has to be grilled until he speaks the truth, says Nawaz's counsel

ISLAMABAD: Nawaz Sharif counsel, Khwaja Haris during today's cross examination of Wajid Zia - chief of Joint Investigation Team, said that if the witness continues to lie, I would continue to ask the same question again and again.When the hearing of Avenfield reference against ousted prime minister resumed, Haris began cross examination of National Accountability Bureau's key witness on Volume X of JIT's investigation report, which was submitted to the Supreme Court during Panama Papers case.Accountability Court (AC) judge Muhammad Bashir on Tuesday had directed Zia to make a request to the SC's Registrar Office for provision of Volume X of the JIT report, as Nawaz’s counsel was to cross-examine him regarding some mutual legal assistance (MLA) applications that the JIT had forwarded to the UAE authorities for verification of the documents regarding the Gulf Steel Mills (GSM).While the counsel was asking the tough question to the JIT chief, NAB's prosecutor intervened and said the defence counsel is asking the same thing for the last three days. To this, Haris said it is my job to bring out the truth and for this I have to ask multiple questions.During hearing, Zia admitted that he did not bring the complete copy of Volume X of the report and only brought the replies of seven letters written under MLA to foreign jurisdictions.On last hearing, Zia told the court that the apex court, on the JIT request, had sealed the Volume X. He said he had also agreed that not only NAB would get copies of Volume X when it had to investigate the corruption references but the defence counsel had also seen that part of the report.Cross-examination of Wajid Zia in the Avenfield apartments corruption reference continued on Wednesday. Legal counsel for Maryam Nawaz and Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar isn yet to cross-examine Wajid Zia on Avenfield corruption reference. The Volume X pertains to the JIT correspondence with foreign countries seeking mutual legal assistance from foreign jurisdiction to solve the Panama case.

from The News International - National https://ift.tt/2GvBl4G