ISLAMABAD: The chief of the country’s primary civilian intelligence agency will brief a Senate committee on Feb 9 on counter-measures taken to guard against ‘spy signals’ emanating from the Diplomatic Enclave, ostensibly aimed at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and other sensitive buildings in its vicinity.

Intelligence Bureau Director General Aftab Sultan is expected to tell the Senate Standing Committee on Interior about the gadgets and technology that were being used to spy on Pakistan and detail the measures being taken.

Rehman Malik, a former interior minister and chairman of the committee, told Dawn that very strong signals had been detected during a meeting in the prime minister’s cabinet room, back in 2012. He said the meeting had to be postponed as the local security apparatus was unable to block the signals.

The disclosures that certain foreign embassies were involved in bugging the phones of important personalities, and that the cabinet room was still being spied on, were made by Senator Malik in June last year during a meeting of the committee.

He made these claims days after a PML-N lawmaker, Chaudhry Tanvir Khan, moved an adjournment motion in the Senate, seeking the suspension of normal business to discuss the phone-tapping of important personalities by foreign embassies.

The matter was finally referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Interior for a probe into the claim.

Senator Malik told Dawn that the initial part of the meeting, where the issue of spying and phone-tapping would be discussed, would be in-camera.

Sources said that the Chairman of Senate Standing Committee on Rules and Privileges, retired Col Tahir Hussain Mashhadi – who is also a member of the committee on interior – may use the opportunity to raise the alleged tapping of former Finance Minister Salim Mandviwala’s phone by the Intelligence Bureau.

Mr Mashhadi’s committee had summoned the IB chief last year to respond to a privilege motion, moved by Mr Mandviwala, alleging that his mobile phone was being tapped by a spy agency.

The IB chief, however, had said the bureau was not tapping the telephones of politicians and parliamentarians, but it had blanket permission to tap the phones of suspected terrorists and criminals.

He said the bureau required prior permission from the prime minister to tap someone’s phone. “I can say categorically that I have not received any directives, either from previous or the present prime minister, to tap the telephones of parliamentarians,” he had said.

After the DG’s remarks, Mr Mandviwala showed the committee a copy of an internal IB communiqué, carrying a directive to provide the complete call data of his personal number.

The IB chief initially said that the “internal memo” was fake, but sought more time to verify its authenticity when asked to say so in writing. Even though a report was sought from the IB chief within ten days, the status of that internal memo still remains a mystery.

Other items on agenda of the Standing Committee on Interior include the reasons and contributing factors for illegal immigration from Pakistan, total figures of illegal immigrants for the last five years, implementation of Immigration Ordinance 1979 and the number of fake recruiting agencies and action taken against them by the Federal Investigation Agency.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2016