KARACHI: Former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani said his legal team would challenge the report of a commission, formed to probe the Memogate scandal, which stated that he authored the controversial memo.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Haqqani described the report as “political” and “one-sided” based on the findings of a “foreigner”.
He said his lawyers would be challenging the report on the basis of legal flaws in the proceedings of the commission before the Supreme Court.
“The entire proceedings reflected the political machination of ideological elements including the judiciary and had little to do with fact-finding,” he alleged.
“The commission has based its findings on the claims of one man, a foreigner, and dubious records presented by him, which were reinforced by an equally dubious exercise termed as forensics,” he said.
The former diplomat also stated that the commission could neither pronounce him guilty nor uphold his innocence. “In any case, the commission was created as a fact-finding body and not as a trial court so it has no right to pronounce anyone guilty or innocent of any crime.”
“Similarly, the Supreme Court of Pakistan cannot act as a trial court and must not abuse its authority as the court of final appeal to divert attention from the embarrassment of its politicised leadership,” he added.
Haqqani also suggested that there may have been an ulterior motive to the commission’s report. “The commission’s report has been released to distract attention from other more embarrassing developments,” he said, alluding to the allegations relating to Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s son Arsalan Chaudhry.
Published In The Express Tribune, June 13th, 2012.
COMMENTS (1)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
This is really sad. The establishment has tried to divert attention away from the judiciary by giving this stupid verdict against Haqqani. The fact of the matter is that Hussain Haqqani did not need to write a memo – he already had good contacts with the top level Pentagon and US State department officials. When will the Abbottabad commission verdict come out? When will we find out as to who helped OBL? How come he was found in the heart of a military garrison?