ISLAMABAD: Relatives of Nasir Butt, the main character in the accountability judge’s video leak case, on Thursday filed a petition in Islamabad High Court (IHC) against alleged harassment by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

Akash Waheed, Rawakha Waheed and Hanzala Arif, residents of Ratta Amral in Rawalpindi and nephews of Mr Butt, cited the FIA director general and its counter-terrorism wing assistant director as respondents.

The petitioners alleged that the FIA was harassing them as well as the family members of Mr Butt, who lived in the UK.

Petitioners seek direction to FIA not to pressurise them just for being relatives of the man behind judge’s video leak controversy

They informed the court that the FIA assistant director “just to harass and pressurise the family members of Nasir Butt along with the petitioners summoned them to the FIA headquarters and later roped them in false and frivolous cases and leveled sections of Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) which is against the basic rights of the petitioners.”

The petition added that the FIA was harassing even those family members who had “no concern whatsoever with the commission of any offence.”

The petitioners requested the court to direct the FIA “not to harass and pressurise them and other family members” just for being relatives of Mr Butt.

Mr Butt, senior vice president of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), has recently submitted evidence against former accountability judge Mohammad Arshad Malik.

The documents included notarised copies of transcript of the audio recording of a conversation between Mr Butt and the former judge, transcript of video-cum-audio recording of the conversation, an affidavit of the petitioner, forensic reports of audio and video recordings and a USB containing copies of the original audio and video-cum-audio recordings of the conversation.

He requested the court to permit the documents to be placed on record of the appeal against the conviction of Nawaz Sharif in the Al-Azizia reference as the judge in the video confessed to have convicted the former prime minister under duress.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2019

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