Cypher saga

The much-hyped cypher that former prime minister Imran Khan claimed was proof of a US conspiracy to sack him has returned to haunt him. The claims by Imran’s former principal secretary Azam Khan in his “confession statement” open the door for several cases to be filed against the former PM and some of his top advisers, including Azam himself. This is because, even though the confession purports Azam tried to stop Imran from potentially violating the Official Secrets Act, he was still party to the illegality since he did not come forward, as a top bureaucrat would be expected to do.

The statement is quite fairly being seen as suspicious, since Azam had been missing for over a month and only resurfaced hours after the statement became public. There is still mystery around how and where he ended up recording the ‘confession’, since this specific type must be recorded in front of a magistrate, and several media outlets have been unable to identify the judicial or executive magistrate that did the recording. The statement also mentions Imran’s refusal to return the cypher and his later claim that he misplaced it. While PTI leaders have stressed that Imran only had a decoded copy, not the actual cypher, that is no excuse — the contents of the cypher were a state secret, and the copy was thus also a confidential document. The question is whether or not the cypher had been properly declassified when Imran began waving it around, and even if so, whether ‘misplacing’ it is prosecutable.

Imran’s own response thus far has been dismissive, limited to a promise to provide “uncensored details” of the cypher saga, which are “more gripping than any drama on TV”. However, this would have been more convincing if he had not held these ‘details’ back and actually dismissed his own cypher narrative after it began to lose steam. The fact is that while Imran may claim this is just another case, the penalty in the Official Secrets Act for mishandling documents is as much as 14 years imprisonment, making it the biggest charge against Imran so far.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2023.

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