ISLAMABAD: Mansoor Ijaz, the central character in the memo scandal, said on Friday that ISI chief Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, while investigating evidence related to the memorandum allegedly delivered to former US military chief Mike Mullen, had told him that army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had instructed him to inquire into the matter.
In his testimony before the judicial commission investigating the case, he said that Gen Pasha had told him during their four-hour meeting in London’s Park Lane Intercontinental Hotel on Oct 22 that both he and the chief of the army staff were keen to ensure that the political government completed its tenure, but they also wanted to get to the bottom of what the memo was all about.
“We then went through the information. I told him former ambassador (Husain) Haqqani was behind the memorandum. Gen Pasha read the memorandum in three or four minutes and demonstrated surprise and dismay, at times disgust and disappointment, over the content of the document.
“At the point during the meeting where he learned of the three US people I had approached to deliver the memorandum to Adm Mullen, he asked me how I knew each of them, how well and to briefly summarise my requests to them in terms of why, who was involved, under what authority and in which modality such delivery might take place with each person.
From time to time during the data debrief, I would open my computer or my BlackBerry device and point out how the data was stored. He then carefully analysed dates, times, ‘properties’ of my Microsoft documents to see when the documents were created and how they fit into the timeline.”
Mr Ijaz also alleged that after the May events Mr Haqqani had twice tried to delete the BBM (Blackberry message) chat from his cell phone. “Mr Haqqani twice changed his handsets because he knew that by changing the set and deleting me from his contacts’ list the BBM chat data would automatically be removed.
“He did not know that I had decommissioned my set (took my Sim card out to preserve the data) in the first instance and in the second instance he deleted his own ID on my handset and in doing so it caused anomaly (his name no longer appeared) in our chat exchange.”
The Pakistani-American businessman said that a week before he met Gen Pasha, Mr Haqqani called him to inform him that he had just learned that the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence was going to London. “I expressed disinterest and lack of knowledge. He expressed some anxiety over my disinterest and said something to the effect of ‘what’s going on here’ -- a clear reference to his scepticism of my disinterest.
“He did not ask once during that call whether I had been approached to see Gen Pasha. His only concern was whether Gen Pasha would be meeting the Financial Times (FT) editors in London, whether I knew anything about it and whether I would do him the favour of intervening with the FT editors to ensure they did not provide Gen Pasha with a copy of the memorandum or any other evidence that I had provided the editors when I wrote the opinion piece.”
Mr Ijaz told the commission that he had delivered the memo to Admiral Mullen in the interest of the United States.
Admiral Mullen in his farewell testimony on Sept 22 had made it clear that ISI was responsible for certain attacks on US interests in Afghanistan. “In my article I offered a policy discipline how to handle alleged ISI complexity of attacks against US interests.”
He also submitted more evidence in support of his testimony, including call records and some emails related to the matter.
Mr Haqqani’s counsel Zahid Hussain Bukhari raised a number of objections on the admissibility of Mr Ijaz’s evidence.
He said the evidences were incomplete and Mr Ijaz wanted to hide the facts.
Advocate Bukhari also objected to the authority of the commission’s secretary who was verifying the sources of the evidence from London.
He pointed out that the secretary, Raja Jawad Abbas Hassan, could take the evidence into his custody and present it before the commission.
At one point the lawyer requested the commission not to record the statement of Mr Ijaz, but when the latter started to comment on the ISI and its alleged role in Afghanistan, he immediately withdrew his request and demanded that the whole statement be recorded.
The commission also took up an application filed by one Sardar Siddique Ahmed Khan for seeking a clarification from the president because his name had allegedly been used in the memorandum, but was surprised to know that the applicant had left the courtroom.
A lawyer also requested the commission to take a decision on an application by Raja Riaz, the Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly, seeking the registration of a treason case against Mr Ijaz.
The commission asked its acting secretary Umar Daraz Shakir, not to entertain the applications of persons who were not really interested in pursuing them.
The commission comprises Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, Sindh High Court Chief Justice Musheer Alam and Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman.