No mention of threat or conspiracy in cipher, ex-envoy tells court
Pakistan’s former ambassador to United States, Asad Majeed, has said submitted before the court that there was no mention of ‘threat’ or ‘conspiracy’ in the secret cipher telegram sent last year from the Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C. to the Foreign Office in Islamabad.
The former envoy recorded his statement yesterday before a special court during the hearing of the controversial cipher case against former prime minister and PTI founding chairman Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi.
Special Court’s Judge Abual Hasnat Muhammad Zulqarnain heard the cipher case.
The court is holding trial of Imran Khan and PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi inside Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail for allegedly manipulating the cipher for political gains in March 2022, ahead of a no-confidence motion that resulted in the end of the PTI’s rule.
Besides Asad Majeed, five other witnesses’ statements were also recorded during the hearing. The court has so far recorded the statements of total of 25 witnesses in the case. Asad Majeed informed the court that he served as Pakistan’s ambassador in the United States from January 2019 to March 2022.
He said that on March 7, 2022, American Assistant Secretary Donald Lu was invited to a working lunch. Asad Majeed clarified that the meeting had been pre-arranged and hosted at the Pakistan House. The communication during the meeting was transmitted via the cipher telegram to the secretary of the foreign affairs.
Deputy Head of Mission and Defence Attaché were also present during the meeting.
It was known to both sides that the minutes of the meeting were being taken. Asad Majeed revealed that the cipher telegram conversation during the meeting was reported to Islamabad.
The ambassador said,
“I was summoned to the National Security Committee meeting, where a proposal to issue a demarche was made. The cipher issue was a challenge for the Pak-US relations.”
Former Principal Secretary Azam Khan, while recording his statement on January 18, had mentioned that the Secretary Foreign Office had handed the copy of the cipher to former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. He had suggested presenting the matter before the then prime minister Imran Khan the next morning, and after obtaining a copy from the Foreign Office, they had gone to the Prime Minister’s office, he said.
Azam also told the court that the copy of the cipher had been misplaced by Imran. He claimed that Imran Khan had directed his military secretary and personal staff a number of times to search for the cipher, but then he waved a piece of paper in the public rally held in Islamabad on March 27 ‘implying’ that it was the diplomatic cipher. Referring to the incident, the former bureaucrat had, however, clarified that “as he [Imran Khan] did not open or read it [in the rally], therefore, I do not know what the paper was.” Besides Asad Majeed, other officials including Faisal Termizi, and Secretary Interior Akbar Durrani were among the other witnesses who recorded their statements.
A day earlier, former foreign secretary Sohail Mahmood also recorded his statement, saying that he retired as the foreign secretary in September 2022. Till that time, the Prime Minister’s Office had not returned the cipher copy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he said.