ISLAMABAD: A defiant and emotional Nawaz Sharif returned home after a seven-year exile but his stay on the Pakistani soil lasted no more than four hours during which he was arrested and bundled into a special plane that took him to Saudi Arabia and an uncertain political future.

A number of opposition parties aligned with Sharif observed a Black Day while lawyers boycotted courts all over the country. His family moved the Supreme Court challenging his expulsion to Saudi Arabia.

Braving threats from the regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf who overthrew him eight years ago, Sharif returned here by a PIA flight from London only to be met at the heavily-guarded airport by commandos and officials who slapped him with fresh corruption cases.

The 57-year-old two-time former Prime Minister, sporting a thick crop of hair over the bald pate that he had, got into a stand-off with officials inside the aircraft when he refused to handover his passport to them. The 90-minute confrontation ended when he was escorted to the airport lounge.

As the security forces fought pitched battles with his supporters miles away from the cordoned off airport, Sharif was given the option of being arrested again or deportation. He chose arrest after he was taken to a waiting helicopter.

However, the helicopter took him to a nearby military base where a plane was waiting to take him to Saudi Arabia whose rulers had brokered a deal between Sharif and Musharraf seven years ago under which he stayed in Jeddah before moving to London about two years back.

Sharif’s supporters made an unsuccessful last-ditch attempt to secure the intervention of the Supreme Court which had recently declared that the former Prime Minister and his brother Shabaz were free to return to Pakistan.

Khwaja Muhammad Asif, a senior leader of Sharif’s PML-N party, met the Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikar M Chaudhry, who has fought his own battles with Musharraf in recent months, in a bid to seek the Supreme Court’s intervention even as the drama at the airport was unfolding. His contention was that the apex court’s order to the government to allow the Sharifs to return home had been violated and that the government had committed contempt of the court. There was, however, no immediate judicial intervention but the petition is expected to come up in a day or so.

Government is likely to take the line that it had not violated any court order because it had allowed Sharif to return home. The other developments were subsequent.

The government itself justified the decision to deport the former Prime Minister by saying that it was in the "supreme interest" of Pakistan.

Musharraf’s argument is that Sharif had entered into the Saudi-brokered deal which entailed a ten-year exile. He had therefore to be sent to Jeddah for three more years.

Sharif, who was accompanied by a large media contingent and some of his party leaders during the flight from London, was in tears as the PIA plane landed. He confessed that he was unsure of his fate.

However, at the airport lounge he minced no words in lashing out at Musharraf saying that it was the General’s "ego and stubbornness" that "is standing in my way"