KARACHI, Aug 6: The Pakistan Peoples Party on Wednesday alleged that the Swiss investigating officer who awarded six-month suspended sentence to the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Zardari had been influenced by the government of Pakistan.
Addressing a news conference at Bilawal House here on Thursday, the deputy secretary general of the party, Mian Raza Rabbani, did not spell out the mode of influence exercized by the government. However, he said this would emerge from the inquiry about how much the Establishment had spent on this case for maligning the PPP leadership.
Asked whether he thought General Pervez Musharraf was involved in the process, Mr Rabbani said: “This is an old and dormant matter. It was reactivated after Gen Musharraf’s foreign visit. So you can draw your own conclusion.”
He demanded of the government to stop media trial and character assassination of PPP leadership and said that the party should also get as much time on electronic media as the government ministers were getting to rebuke politicians.
Asked whether this development would affect PPP’s dialogue with the government, Mr Rabbani categorically refuted the perception that any covert PPP-government dialogue was in progress.
Replying to a question, he said that once an appeal was filed against the alleged mala fide order of the Swiss investigating officer in the case, the question of pursuing defamation matter against him would be looked into.
When Mr Rabbani was asked to substantiate his contention that the order was mala fide, he said that Ms Bhutto’s lawyers had stated before the Supreme Court that the concerned Swiss official had been providing blank attested papers to the former Ehtesab Bureau.
The PPP leader further said that the issue of necklace also proved his mala fide because on May 9, 1998 a British lawyer in his affidavit had said that it did not belong to Ms Bhutto and that the payment made for it had nothing to do with her. The locker from which the necklace was recovered also did not belong to her nor was she a beneficiary in any way.
In this context, he also displayed a certificate of the London-based Chatila Jewellers, dated May 4, 1999, in which it was said that as per their record “the purchase invoice marker ‘initial-1’ for the piece of jewellery marked ‘initial-2’ is not in the name of Ms Benazir Bhutto whose passport copy is marked ‘initial-3’.”
He said that the government had alleged that Ms Bhutto and her spouse had several Swiss accounts but not a single one of them had yet been identified and none of the 65 such accounts claimed by the Establishment belonged to her although huge amount had been spent by the regime to malign the PPP leadership.
He challenged the government to prove its claim and said that it was regrettable that those who had defaulted on bank loans and indulgedin other corrupt practices had staged a comeback after striking a deal with the NAB authorities and had been serving the regime’s political interests.
He was critical of the federal information minister’s reported remarks that the Swiss investigating officer’s verdict would have a bearing on other cases.
Maintaining that there was no nexus between this and other cases, Mr Rabbani asked how would the minister know in advance as to how the courts would proceed in other matters.
He claimed that this only exposed the government’s intention to keep its biggest political rival out of contest by coercing the judiciary.
He said that it was part of a calculated move to marginalize political rivals.
Replying to another question, he said that PPP offices at home and abroad has been directed to take appropriate steps to counter this vicious media trial.
Mr Rabbani, who was accompanied by Syed Khurshid Shah and Taj Haider, also reiterated the contentions of Senator Farook Naek, counsel of Ms Bhutto, on the Swiss verdict which among other things included that the investigating officer had bypassed the normal procedure.