Friday, 28 October, 2022 I 1 Rabi us Sani, 1444 I Rs 15.00 | Vol XIII No 119 I 12 Pages I Lahore Edition
ISI chIef claImS PTI offered Bajwa ‘IndefInITe exTenSIon’ for helP In voTe of no-confIdence g
IN uNPREcEDENTED PRESSER, SPYMASTER AND cHIEF MILITARY SPOKESPERSON IMPLIcATE IMRAN, ARY NEWS bOSS IN jOuRNALIST MuRDER
ISLAMABAD
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staff report
AKISTAN Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), struggling to secure its government in the face of a looming vote of noconfidence brought by the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance, in March offered the army chief “an indefinite extension” apparently in return for help in surviving it, claimed Lt. Gen. Nadeem Anjum, chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, on Thursday. In an unprecedented, explosive and rather strongly-worded press conference, his first since assuming office in October last year, the spy chief — who was accompanied by Lt. Gen. babar Iftikhar, the director general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) — spoke at length, often candidly, on issues ranging from the diplomatic cypher at the heart of Khan’s ouster, to the protest march, and to the cold-blooded assassination of journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya. Talking about the “lucrative offer” of extension, Gen. Anjum claimed the offer to the army chief was “made in front of me. He [Gen. bajwa] rejected it because he wanted the institution to move forward from a controversial role to a constitutional role.” Taking a thinly-veiled jibe at the PTI chairman Gen. Anjum said the former prime minister met the army chief in the night and then called him a “traitor” the morning.
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“If the commander-in-chief [of Pakistan Army] is a traitor then why did you meet him behind the curtain? Meeting [him] is your [constitutional] right but it cannot be possible that you meet at night and call [him] a traitor,” he said. Gen. Iftikhar opened the press conference, saying the purpose of his talk was to shed light on Sharif’s killing and the “circumstances surrounding it”. “This presser,” he said, “is being held in the context of presenting facts so that ‘facts, fiction and opinion’ can be differentiated”. Shehbaz Sharif, who just returned from a state visit to Saudi Arabia, had been “specially informed” about the sensitivity of the press conference, he added. The chief military spokesperson said there was a need to examine how “a false narrative has been made and people have been misled” on the assassination. “Institutions, leadership, and even the army chief himself have been accused without a reason to create an extraordinary chaotic situation,” said Gen. Iftikhar. He said Sharif’s death was a “very tragic incident” and called the journalist an “icon in the field of journalism, a naval officer’s son and a martyr’s brother and a serving officer’s brother-in-law”. His programmes will be seen as a role model for journalists, he added. Gen. Iftikhar shared the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa issued a threat alert for
SPY cHIEF cLAIMS FORMER PM FIRST DOWNPLAYED, LATER PLAYED WITH cYPHER
Sharif on August 5 on “special directive of chief Minister Mahmood Khan”. This shows the threat alert was issued with the aim to force Sharif to leave the country, he claimed. “Salman Iqbal [ARY News boss] told [executive vice president at the station] Ammad Yousuf after Shahbaz Gill’s arrest to send Sharif out of the country,” he said, adding that the ARY Group boss must “be brought back to Pakistan” and made part of the investigations into the death of the journalist. “We all should wait for the formation of an inquiry commission. Have confidence in your institutions. We have been washing the mistakes of the past with blood for the last 20 years. We can make mistakes but we can’t be traitors or conspirers,” said the military spokesperson. Gen. Iftikhar also confirmed the military has requested the government to conduct a high-level probe into the killing of Sharif. POLITICS BEING PLAYED WITH CYPHER: “Since Arshad was an investigative journalist, he also looked into the cypher issue when it surfaced,” shared the general. He also highlighted the journalist had also interviewed the then-prime minister Khan on the issue, adding that at the time, it was claimed that he was shown the confidential diplomatic document. “Facts linked with the cypher and Arshad Sharif’s death need to be found. So there is no ambiguity left in this regard,” said the director-general of ISPR. He said that the facts linked with the cypher and Sharif’s death need to be found, so there is no ambiguity. Disclosing how the cypher issue began, Gen. Iftikhar said the army chief had discussed it with Khan on March 11 after which the latter had termed it to be “not a big issue”. “It was surprising for us when on March 27 a piece of paper was waved and an attempt was made to build a narrative that was far from reality.” He said that several facts had come to light regarding the cypher revealing the “baseless and unfounded” narrative surrounding it. The ISPR informed the National Security committee (NSc) that no proof was found regarding the conspiracy against the PTI government, he said.
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Imran questions rationale behind ‘political presser’ by state institution LAHORE staff report
PTI chairman Imran Khan on Thursday raised questions over what he called the the “unprecedented press conference” by DGs of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt-Gen Nadeem Ahmed Anjum and Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) LtGen babar Iftikhar, arguing if institutions were apolitical, what was the purpose of holding a “political presser”. In an interview to a private TV channel, the former premier said that the press conference was “unprecedented” and “never heard of”. “Either there should be some issue that concerns them, like security, but they held a political press conference so I don’t understand the rationale behind it.
could the defence or interior minister or prime minister not have done this job? What was their [the institutions’] job in holding the press conference?”, argued Imran Khan. The PTI chief then went on to say that if he started giving answers to the questions raised by the officials, “it will cause a lot of damage to the country and the institution and he did not want to damage Pakistan army”. “Ever since I was removed from the office, I tried my best to prevent any harm to the country and Pakistan army. I know that if I would say anything about the establishment, it will impact the army,” he said. “but when they do a press conference like this […] and if I start responding […] it will directly damage our army and I don’t want to hurt them in any way. This
is why I always try that my criticism is constructive and beneficial to the institution,” Imran said. He continued that he had been criticising “Dirty Harry” — who according to him has been recently posted in Islamabad — for the torture inflicted on Azam Swati and Shahbaz Gill. “Our effort are to criticise them. These actions that you’re doing, who is hurting? The country is being hurt, and what is happening because of these acts?” Talking about “backdoor talks”, Imran said that before the no-confidence vote, he was aware of the “conspiracy” being hatched to toppled his government. “I very publicly said again and again that I had told Gen bajwa that if at this time this conspiracy succeeds it will have a direct impact and loss on economy.
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Slain Arshad Sharif gets heroic farewell amid tears, sloganeering ISLAMABAD staff report
Hundreds of thousands of people attended the funeral of Arshad Sharif, anchorperson and outspoken military critic who was killed under mysterious circumstances in Kenya, at the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad on Thursday. Sharif was killed Sunday night when the car he was in sped up and drove through a checkpoint outside the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and police opened fire. Nairobi police expressed regret over the incident, claiming it was a case of “mistaken identity” during a search for a similar car involved in a child abduction case. A plane carrying his body touched down at the airport in Islamabad just after midnight Wednesday. Early Wednesday, his family, friends and government officials received his body. The funeral drew up to 400,000 mourners, according to police at the scene, with people spilling into the gardens and surrounding streets. TV footage showed massive crowds outside and inside the mosque. It was rare in the history of Pakistan for a journalist to have such a large funeral procession. Funeral prayers in absentia were also arranged in cities across the country. Many media figures attended, but supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party made up a large proportion of the crowd, waving flags and chanting “Arshad, your blood will bring revolution”. “Arshad Sharif sacrificed his life to expose the faces of the corrupt and we should not let that sacrifice be for nothing,” said Muhammad Iqbal, a 35-year-old shopkeeper and PTI supporter who had travelled from Rawalpindi. Another participant, Samina Qureshi, said PTI supporters came “to vent our anger against the military which has manipulated politics throughout”. After prayers, coffin bearers struggled to push through the crowd to a waiting ambulance for onward passage to the H-11 cemetery in Islamabad. A large contingent of police was deployed at the graveyard where journalists and members of the civil society reached in huge numbers. During the burial, slogans of “Allahu Akbar ” and those in favour of former prime minister Imran Khan were chanted. The 50-year-old journalist fled Pakistan in August amid threats to his life. He traveled abroad after going into hiding in his own country to avoid arrest following an anonymous complaint against him on allegations of maligning the military. His whereabouts were not publicly known. Most of his relatives and friends knew only that he had spent time in Dubai and London. A month later, Sharif’s employer — ARY News — fired him, claiming, without offering evidence, he had violated the TV station’s social media policy. His talk show POWERPLAY, which aired on Mondays and Thursdays, was discontinued.