{"id":14769,"date":"2018-09-12T04:23:40","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T04:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14769"},"modified":"2018-09-12T04:23:40","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T04:23:40","slug":"former-pakistani-first-lady-kulsoom-nawaz-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14769","title":{"rendered":"Former Pakistani first lady Kulsoom Nawaz dies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Islamabad, Pakistan <\/strong>–\u00a0Former Pakistani first lady Kulsoom Nawaz, wife of jailed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has died in a London hospital after a prolonged illness, her family said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nawaz, who had been receiving treatment for cancer since 2017, died on Tuesday, Shehbaz Sharif, her husband’s younger brother and head of the\u00a0Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)\u00a0<\/span>party in his absence, said<\/a> on Twitter. She was 68.<\/p>\n

“My sister-in-law and Nawaz Sharif’s wife Begum Kulsoom Nawaz is no longer with us,” he said. “May Allah bless her.”<\/p>\n

Kulsoom Nawaz’s health deteriorated rapidly after her initial diagnosis with lymphoma in June 2017. She was running for a by-election in her PML-N’s stronghold of Lahore at the time.<\/p>\n

In September that year, she handily won that by-election<\/a>, beating out the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Yasmin Rashid, despite not being able to campaign.<\/p>\n

In her stead, her campaign was led by her daughter Maryam Nawaz.<\/p>\n

Nawaz Sharif and Maryam were convicted<\/a> in July by an anti-corruption court for not being able to prove the source of assets used to buy a set of upmarket London apartments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They are currently serving jail terms<\/a> of 10 and seven years, respectively, at Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail, as well as being fined $10.5m and $2.6m each.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Limited public role<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In a statement, Prime Minister Imran Khan<\/a>, a bitter rival to the Sharifs whose PTI handily beat<\/a> the outgoing PML-N at a general election in July, said Nawaz Sharif and his daughter would be “provided all facilities that they are entitled to under law”.<\/p>\n

Khan termed the former first lady a “brave woman”.<\/p>\n

Nawaz had been struggling<\/a> in and out of consciousness in recent months, being placed on a ventilator at one point.<\/p>\n

Born in 1950, she was known for her reserved nature in public, serving as a quiet foil to her husband, who was elected as Pakistan’s prime minister three times.<\/p>\n

Although her public role – particularly with regards to Pakistan’s often bitter domestic politics – was limited, she was known to exercise a certain degree of quiet power within the PML-N party.<\/p>\n

Following her death, politicians from both sides of the aisle – including Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi<\/a>, President Arif Alvi<\/a>,\u00a0and numerous members of the PML-N – offered condolence messages to the Sharif family via Twitter.<\/p>\n

Reporting by Asad Hashim, Al Jazeera’s digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Islamabad, Pakistan –\u00a0Former Pakistani first lady Kulsoom Nawaz, wife of jailed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has died in a London hospital after a prolonged illness, her family said.\u00a0 Nawaz, who had been receiving treatment for cancer since 2017, died on Tuesday, Shehbaz Sharif, her husband’s younger brother and head of the\u00a0Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)\u00a0party…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}