ISLAMABAD, Aug 16: Pakistan government does not want the Canadian authorities to entertain the asylum application of its vice-consul in Toronto who was recently transferred back to the headquarters in Islamabad, Dawn learnt here on Saturday.
Pakistan’s embassy in Ottawa has already let the Canadian foreign office know this.
Pakistan’s vice-consul in Toronto Mr Naeem Ahmad, from the batch of 1991, has nearly completed his first posting abroad. However, his recently issued transfer orders have not been a routine matter.
The government maintains that it has solid evidence of “financial impropriety.” A local Canadian-based ethnic paper Pakistan Post has reported about these charges.
If there is hard evidence against Naeem Ahmad this case should be an ‘open and shut’ corruption case.
The vice-consul has already engaged a lawyer.
Mr Naeem Ahmad is reportedly asking for asylum claiming that he is an Ahmadi.
Officials say that Ahmad signed the government declaration form stating that he is a Muslim. Reportedly, an ethnic paper in Canada apparently did mention that he is an Ahmadi.
However, given the reputation that the Pakistan government has acquired through international and national reports criticizing treatment of its minorities this case has the potential to become complicated. The plea taken by the vice-consul’s lawyer of religious discrimination and harassment of his client by the government of Pakistan because he is an Ahmadi makes the situation awkward for Islamabad.
Meanwhile, Islamabad has already conveyed to Ottawa in clear terms that if they set a precedent of protecting law-breaking diplomats by entertaining applications for political asylums it will make a mockery of Pakistan’s own laws and regulations.
