Slashdot Mirror
Calibri Font Plays Its Role: Pakistan Now Sans Sharif as Prime Minister is Disqualified (neowin.net)
Usama Jawad, writing for Neowin: A few weeks ago, we reported that Microsoft's Calibri font has been used as evidence against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family in a corruption case. Today, Sharif has been disqualified from his position as a part of the court's final verdict of the case. The case concerns the "Panama Papers", which is a collection of 11.5 million documents detailing information related to over 200,000 offshore accounts. Ever since the Panama Papers were anonymously leaked back in 2015, there has been a major shift in the political situation in many countries. One such country is Pakistan, where the names of numerous members of the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family were spotted in the papers. If you aren't aware of the Calibri controversy, it is as follows: Nawaz Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz submitted photocopies of several documents in order to deny any corruption, but it appears that the documents contained Microsoft's Calibri font, even though they were dated February 6, 2006. It is important to note that the font wasn't commercially available until much later. Despite being created in 2004, the font did not reach the general public until January 30, 2007.
The pun might not be new, but it was new to me, and I enjoyed it's aptness. I also hope that the pun was partly a nod in the direction of the (un?)famous 1977 April Fools' Day extended hoax by The Guardian: San Serriffe
I can't decide whether you're trying to point out an interesting, but not dispositive fact, or whether this is an example of typical Slashdot lawyering. Preponderance of the evidence, or even "reasonable doubt," does not turn on whether one can construct an improbable situation in which documents could be authored using Calibri.
They've thought of that.
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"The first public beta version, according to a Wikipedia entry, was released on June 6, 2006 -- close to four months after the papers were said to have been signed by Maryam Nawaz."
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"Responding personally to the question separately, font designer de Groot said, 'While in theory it would have been possible to create a document using Calibri in 2006, the font would have to be obtained from a beta operating system, from the hands of computer nerds'.
'Why would anyone use a completely unknown font for an official document in 2006?' he went on to question.
'If the person using Calibri was such a font lover that he or she had to use the new Calibri, then he or she should be able to prove that other documents were printed with Calibri in 2006, and these prints should be in the hands of other people as well,' he wrote his email addressed to the newspaper."
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That last bit is the pertinent question. If you're arguing that the documents are authentic, where are the other 'official documents prepared using Calibri' that would have been prepared at the same time? Even if the government copies of the Nawaz documents were lost, where are the government copies of those other non-Nawaz Calibri documents? Do the government's records of documents prepared at that time ever contain ones prepared in Calibri?
B'cos it's true! 3 of the groups I listed are Pakistani Jihadist groups based in Pakistan (1 of them in Pak Kashmir), and the other 2 have their main presence there.