Memogate scandal: Yasin Malik committed perjury, says Ijaz

Whistleblower gives JKLF chief final chance to withdraw ‘false’ statement.

LAHORE:

Mansoor Ijaz, the central character in the Memogate scandal, has stated that it is unfortunate that Yasin Malik, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, allowed himself to be dragged into the memorandum affair “as a pawn in the unprecedented cover-up being orchestrated by Husain Haqqani (Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US)”.

In a letter emailed to The Express Tribune on Tuesday, Ijaz said Malik’s statement to the judicial commission about their dealings was not true at all and that Ijaz could prove this through exposing email, telephone, hotel bills and daily log records.

Ijaz accused Malik of giving a false statement, exposure of which could put him behind bars. He offered Malik a ‘final chance’ to withdraw his ‘false’ statement and himself from this case that he is unrelated to.

Ijaz claimed that Malik cannot deny the help that was provided to him and the Kashmiri people over a decade ago to achieve the structural ceasefire that enabled General Pervez Musharraf and former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to find a nearly permanent accord over Kashmir at the 2001 Agra summit.

“Yasin’s meeting in my presence with the then deputy director of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Chander D Sahay, was a key turning point
in bringing about the ceasefire that gave ordinary Kashmiris their lives back. For Malik to say otherwise today is a prosecutable lie,” the letter stated.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th, 2012.