ISLAMABAD: A special court of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Wednesday rejected the post-arrest bail of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Senator Azam Khan Swati in a case registered against him over anti-establishment tweets.

Special Judge (Central) Azam Khan observed that Senator Swati had repeated the same crime in which he was already on a post-arrest bail.

During the course of the hearing, FIA’s special prosecutor Raja Rizwan Abbasi argued that Mr Swati operated a verified Twitter account and he was being followed by politicians, journalists and the public at large. He said Mr Swati never contested the ownership of his Twitter handle and used it to build an anti-army narrative.

Mr Abbasi claimed this was a deliberate attempt to incite mutiny among personnel of the armed forces. He said the PTI leader misused the relief of bail and tweeted the same text for which he was facing a case before the FIA’s Cybercrimes Wing.

Mr Swati’s counsel Babar Awan argued that the complainant, who had lodged the first information report (FIR) against his client, was not an aggrieved party.

He said the case had been registered by the FIA and it was not on a par with the complaint filed under defamation laws.

Mr Awan argued that the court could impose a maximum penalty of Rs1,000 on Mr Swati over his tweet, but he was being moved from one province to another.

The FIA had earlier this month arrested Mr Swati for defamation, statement conducing to public mischief, and highly obnoxious campaign of intimidating tweets, after his fiery speech at a PTI long march in Rawalpindi in which he lashed out at the senior military leadership.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2022