Washington, Jun 12: In a veiled attack on the judiciary and his detractors, Pakistan's former ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, today dismissed the memo commission's report as “political and one-sided”, hours after the findings were made public.
The commission had concluded that Haqqani was behind a mysterious memo that sought US help to stave off a feared coup and said he was “not loyal” to the country while serving as an envoy.
In a statement issued here, Haqqani said his lawyers would address the legal flaws of the process relating to the creation and proceedings of the Commission before the Supreme Court.
“The Commission's report has been released to distract attention from other more embarrassing developments,” he said alluding to the allegations relating to the Chief Justice's son Arsalan Chaudhry.
Claiming that he had nothing to do with the memo, Haqqani said the Commission might have come to a different conclusion if it had heard him out, which it did not.
“The entire proceeding reflected the political machination of ideological elements including the judiciary and had little to do with fact finding,” he added.
“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.
“Just as a reliable post-mortem examination of a dead body cannot be carried out at the home of a doctor of someone's choice, it was absurd to call showing the accuser's electronic devices to an expert of his choice at the Pakistan High Commission in London a forensics examination,” he said.
Haqqani pointed out that the memo issue had been based on newspaper clippings and the Supreme Court had created the Commission amid an orchestrated media campaign against him. “The Commission's head bent over backward to accommodate the instigator of false claims while denying every request by me and my counsel.
“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 politicized leadership,” he alleged.
Haqqani said that while he continues to respect the institution of the judiciary, he refuses to let his patriotism be judged by those who had endorsed martial law regimes and had even given the right to military dictators to amend the constitution.
