FIA officer summoned in Haqqani case

LHC summons an IO of the FIA who was involved in the investigation of the NAB cases.


Rana Tanveer October 14, 2010

LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC), on Wednesday, summoned an earlier investigation officer (IO) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) who was involved in the investigation of the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) cases in Hussain Haqqani’s petition against the inclusion of his name in the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) beneficiaries list.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Khawaja Muhammad Sharif heard the petition of Haqqani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, in which he claimed that his name had been wrongly put on the NRO beneficiaries’ list by the NAB.

The bench directed FIA investigator Khalid Mehmood, who had been investigating references of the NAB against Haqqani, to appear in person before the court.

Earlier, the NAB submitted record of its investigations against Haqqani on the basis of which he was exonerated in the 1997 case registered against him.

The court was told that a case of irregularities in the grant of a cable TV network licence was investigated by the NAB against Haqqani and Benazir Bhutto. The case against Bhutto was abated due to her death. The NAB’s legal experts said that the investigation was initiated prior to October 12 1999 by the agency and after the promulgation of the NRO in 2007 the investigation was terminated with immediate effect.

Haqqani had submitted that he had never applied for any benefit under the NRO in any case against him.

Haqqani said that the Ehtisab Bureau had arrested him in 1999 and handed him over to the FIA which registered three cases against him on the charge of misuse of power.

He said that after 79 days in detention, he was released on bail by the LHC. He said that the Sindh High Court had quashed the FIR in one of the cases, while the second case was dropped by the investigating agency after it failed to produce any evidence.

Haqqani said that the third case had never reached the prosecution stage in 10 years so there was no question of requesting for relief under the NRO.

He said the investigation agency might have dropped the case of its own accord. The petitioner requested the court to direct the authorities to delete his name from the NRO beneficiaries list.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14th, 2010.

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