ISLAMABAD, Aug 6: The People’s Party Parliamentarians has asked the government to make public the correspondence taken place between Swiss judge Daniel Devaud and the Pakistani authorities during the past six years about the SGS case against Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari.

The demand was made by PPP president Makhdoom Amin Fahim, former NA speaker Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani, MNA Shah Mehmood Qureshi, PPP general secretary Raja Pervez Ashraf and Senator Farhatullah Babar at a press conference here on Wednesday.

The PPP leaders condemned the Swiss judge’s order and said it had no legal value as Mr Devaud was only an investigating officer and was not holding a trial. They claimed that the investigating officer had issued the judgment on the last day of his service and communicated it to the Swiss government four days later.

They said Mr Devaud’s job was only to submit his report to the attorney-general of Switzerland, who would decide whether the case was worth a trial or not. They believed the order was issued by the judge to gain international publicity to bolster his standing in electoral politics.

Mr Fahim said the finding was a politically motivated attempt to malign the PPP leadership. He questioned the timing of the decision as it had come at a time when the government had been cornered by the opposition parties on the LFO issue.

Mr Gillani pointed out that while no notices were served on defendants, the judge had done correspondence for six years with Ms Bhutto’s political rivals in Pakistan. He recalled that the Supreme Court had set aside the conviction awarded by an accountability court in 1999 in the same case when tapes proving “collusion between the law ministry, the investigating officers and the judges” had surfaced.

Mr Qureshi said that in 1997 a report had appeared in the national press, claiming that Ms Bhutto’s Swiss accounts had been frozen. He said the government of that time had exploited the matter for political gains. Where had that amount gone? he asked.

Mr Ashraf termed the finding part of the character assassination campaign allegedly launched by the government against the popular leadership. He said the Musharraf regime considered Ms Bhutto a threat to its rule.

Mr Babar said the investigating officer had mentioned $11.9 million in Ms Bhutto’s two accounts, but added that the federal attorney-general of Switzerland had, on the other hand, said there were no accounts in the name of Ms Bhutto in that country.

Mr Babar showed the copy of a certificate purported to have been issued by the jeweller, as had been mentioned in Mr Devaud’s order. He said no necklace had been purchased by Ms Bhutto or by any person in her name.