FIA wants to hear from Musharraf’s ‘abettors’

JIT official says dictator’s statement to FIA, stance in court same; Zahid Hamid mulls options again

ISLAMABAD:

A day after former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf made fresh revelations relating to the imposition of emergency on November 3, 2007, a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Wednesday said they will probe the military dictator’s former colleagues in the army and incumbent Climate Change minister Zahid Hamid.

An FIA team had on Tuesday recorded Musharraf’s statement in the high treason case where the ex-president blamed former prime minister Shaukat Aziz and then army chief Gen (retd) Ashfaq Pervez Kayani for his decision to impose emergency in 2007.



A member of the JIT told The Express Tribune on Wednesday that they had reviewed the stance Musharraf’s legal team had presented before a three-member special court, which is hearing the treason trial against Musharraf. The official added that the statement recorded on Tuesday and the stance adopted before the court were essentially the same.

In a progress report submitted before the special court on December 17, FIA investigators had outlined their intention in conjunction with court directives to record the statements of Aziz (then prime minister), Hamid (then law minister) and former chief justice of Pakistan Abdul Hameed Dogar. The official added that they had already gathered copies of their statements from the Islamabad High Court.

The FIA had further voiced its intention to seek records related to the November 3, 2007 emergency from the ministries of defence and law, the cabinet and the army’s General Headquarters.



Previously, a joint investigation team, headed by former additional director general of FIA Mohammad Khalid Qureshi, had probed the matter from June 2013 till November. During its review period, it had failed to obtain the requisite records from GHQ despite repeated attempts. It thus remains to be seen whether this JIT would be able to succeed where the previous one had failed.

It also remains to be seen whether it will be able to grill a sitting federal minister or former military officials.

The official said that Hamid has on previous occasions obstructed the investigation process, a claim which Hamid has already rejected.

However, the climate change minister has remained quiet after the most recent disclosures of his former boss. A close aide of Hamid told The Express Tribune that a recent order of the special court trying Musharraf for treason had once again put the minister in a precarious position who was now weighing up his options.

Hamid had returned to the law ministry after Nawaz Sharif was elected as prime minister in June 2013. But he voluntarily resigned from the post when a special court declared him an abettor in the case. He returned to the cabinet recently after the Islamabad High Court set aside the special court’s order.



Now, the minister is again mulling his options. But his aide told The Express Tribune that this time he will not resign, rather he will try and prove his innocence.

“The official record shows that Hamid did not sign the emergency order of Musharraf. There is [a] signature of the then law secretary on the summary,” the aide said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2015.