WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s former US envoy Husain Haqqani rejected on Monday a police complaint against him as a media gimmick that should not be taken seriously.

Mr Haqqani was named in FIRs lodged by three people in two police stations in Kohat earlier this week, accusing him of making hate speeches and “maligning” Pakistan in his books.

“Considering that after so much media noise, the Supreme Court never even decided the so-called memo case, I don’t think an FIR filed to generate fresh media noise should be taken seriously,” said Mr Haqqani in a message released in Washington where he lives now.

“The FIRs are just a media gimmick and I intend to ignore them as such. No one in the rest of the world will treat them as legitimate either,” he wrote.

He said that some in Pakistan had serious problems with research and instead of writing their own books to publicise their views they were creating “a constant hyper-patriotic media circus at home”.

Mr Haqqani urged his critics to read his books because those books were now used as “texts in universities around the world” and not to make the subject of frivolous police proceedings.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2018