We had been promise a commission that was independent but ended up with one that saw its mission as whitewashing the whole affair. What makes this even more galling is that one of the members of the commission was the president of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, who should have refused to sign off on a report that blasted journalists for reporting secrets and at every turn seemed to want to find reasons why Shahzad could have been killed by someone other than the country’s security and intelligence establishment.
The testimony provided by Mr Shahzad’s family to the commission is also very disturbing. His wife and brother seem to also be deflecting the blame away from the agencies, despite the fact that Mr Shahzad himself felt his life was being threatened by them. On the face of it, this would suggest that his family was being pressurised by the powers-that-be, something that would have been ripe for investigation by the commission had they any access to the agencies beyond a written statement and a perfunctory appearance by a low-level official. It is now up to the prime minister, and the journalist community as a whole, to shun this farce of a report. Saleem Shahzad deserves a real investigation, not this sham which seems to have ended up, as a headline in this newspaper pointed out, doing everything but pointing to those responsible for his death.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 15th, 2012.
COMMENTS (8)
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This speaks loudest that we need freedom of expression first then comes the problem of corruption! what if this goverment is corrupt but at least it is not suffocating us to utter a word or expose a bit of secret! wake up people
We are not Pakhtoon, we are true descendant of Prohet Muhammad. There is no family enemies of syed saleem shahzad in the country. Read the statement of Brother of saleem. regarding the cue for murder, individual as no clue. it is the responsibility of the state to detect the clue for murder.
and I am not the state / Power to detect the clue
In the end, the commission’s report cites lack of ‘substantive piece of evidence’ to pin point the murder to ISI officials. “It does not allow us to safely conclude that the ISI was the culprit behind this incident.”
http://tribune.com.pk/story/320957/saleem-shahzad-commission-report-released/
If the Commission could not 'SAFELY' conclude something, will it be possible for others to conclude that and yet remain safe?
Why is it so hard for people to digest that he could have been killed by someone else. As his family have stated in the report that they had family enemies too, with whome they had a long history of voilence. Saleem Shahzad wasnt getting close to anything, if he was than we would have seen it with all his emails and stories in the public eye. Its just another case of another institution using an unfortunate event to appear to be holier then thou...
The report is one that the intelligence agencies of the country can be proud of, since it all but exonerates but without providing any convincing reasons for why it has done so.
There is an obvious legal and logical flaw in your assertion above - you are arguing that the 'Intelligence agencies were guilty until proven innocent' in criticizing the commission for 'not providing convincing reasons as to why it did not hold the intelligence agencies complicit in the murder'. The standard the world over, and one that your editorial page and many liberals have argued when it came to Hussain Haqqani and the memo he is alleged to have composed, is 'innocent until proven guilty'.
Why exhibit such hypocrisy when it comes to civilian vs military issues? Is it so hard to take a consistent stance that both Haqqani and the intelligence agencies are 'innocent till proven guilty'? Even in the case of HH, the SC has only announced a commission to investigate the charges, it has not condemned nor punished HH.
The rightwing/nationalist media is ridiculed and denigrated by liberal commentators for being 'speculative/conspiracy theory laden' when it comes to unsubstantiated accusations against the PPP, yet the same liberals have no problems denouncing the ISI/Army through similar speculation and unsubstantiated arguments.
Pakistani liberals need to become more consistent in the positions they take when it comes to their critique of the military, and not exhibit such blatant double standards.
Shameful - yet symptomatic of how "institutions" are incapable of trying other "institutions". When everyone can call every other institution a failure, the ability to correct things internally becomes impossible. How many agencies will we investigate, when our investigation agencies cannot convict over 75% of terror suspects? How many corrupt politicians will we investigate when politicians are currying favors when appointing judges? How many governments will we lose to coups when our general themselves tear a constitution they are supposed to uphold? And how will we ever try these generals because we have put them above the law?
We cannot let institutions correct institutions any more. If 185 million people want to prosper - they must only look to themselves; look up to each other, give up allegiance to institutions and stand one for better pursuits of education, higher standards for themselves in workplace, higher standards for their behavior in public and show the humanness of society by deeds of love towards each other.
Now I'm 1000% sure that there can be no Independent Judiciary or true Democracy in Pakistan.