Memogate: Yasin Malik's statement is a lie, says Mansoor Ijaz

Ijaz has also called on Yasin Malik to retract his statement.

LAHORE: Mansoor Ijaz, one of the central characters in the Memogate scandal, has said that Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Muhammad Yasin Malik’s meeting with then deputy director of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Chander D Sahary was a key turning point in bringing a permanent ceasefire in Kashmir, and that the Kashmiri leader’s flat denial during Monday’s hearing was a “prosecutable lie.”

Malik had earlier appeared before the commission investigating the Memogate scandal to record his statement in response to the allegations leveled by Ijaz claiming that Malik had a meeting with the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief.

Recalling the events which led to his meeting with Ijaz during a seminar in November 2000, Malik said that Ijaz had invited him for a lunch during which an Indian man showed up. He said that Ijaz had introduced him as a businessman but he left the meeting with the suspicion that the man was the RAW chief.

Ijaz in a statement issued via email said that Malik had made many sacrifices for the Kashmir cause and it was because of this he had helped him achieve a “structural ceasefire with Indian security forces that brought peace to the Kashmir valley for an extended period.”

The Pakistani-American businessman said:

It is thus even more unfortunate that Yasin allowed himself to be dragged into the Memorandum affair yesterday as a pawn in the unprecedented cover up being orchestrated by Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States, and those still in power that he used to answer to.

Ijaz has also called on Malik to retract his statement and adds that he has email records, telephone and hotel bills and other evidence of their meeting and the people present during them.