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16-08-2024
By SJA Jafri
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military has said it arrested three retired officers in connection with the investigation into former spy chief Faiz Hameed, who faces a court-martial on charges of corruption and misuse of power.
The arrests were tied to the proceedings against Hameed, who led the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, for “actions prejudicial to military discipline”, the military said on Thursday.
It said in a statement that it continued to investigate some retired officers and their accomplices for “fomenting instability at the behest of, and in collusion with, vested political interests”.
Political parties and critics often accuse the ISI of interfering in politics and the government. Hameed was arrested on Monday and accused of alleged misconduct in a case related to a private housing scheme. The military said it had completed an inquiry ordered by the Supreme Court into a complaint by a real estate developer.
It accused the former ISI chief of having misused his office to illegally occupy the housing scheme on the outskirts of Islamabad.
It additionally cited “multiple instances of violation of the Pakistan Army Act” following Hameed’s retirement that it said had also been established against him.
Hameed served as the ISI chief from 2019 to 2021 during the tenure of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is now in jail.
Khan replaced him with Lieutenant-General Nadeem Anjum in October 2021, months before the cricketer-turned-politician lost power in April 2022.
Once tipped to become the army chief, Hameed took early retirement in December 2022. Pakistan’s Army Act prohibits a retired military official from engaging in political activities for two years after retirement.
The military is regarded as the most powerful institution in Pakistan, directly ruling the country of 240 million for more than 30 years in its nearly eight-decade-long independent history.
Earlier, six senior Pakistani judges have accused the country’s powerful spy agency of interfering in judicial matters and using “intimidatory” tactics such as secret surveillance and even abduction and torture of their family members.
In a letter dated March 25 but made public on Tuesday evening, the six judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in the capital urged the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) to look into the allegations against officials belonging to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Pakistani military’s premier intelligence agency. The SJC consists of Pakistan’s chief justice, and four other top judges two each from the Supreme Court and High Courts and is the country’s judicial watchdog.
“We believe it is imperative to inquire into and determine whether there exists a continuing policy on part of the executive branch of the state, implemented by intelligence operatives who report to the executive branch, to intimidate judges, under threat of coercion or blackmail, to engineer judicial outcomes in politically consequential matters,” said the letter.
The Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa called the entire panel of 15 Supreme Court judges for a meeting to discuss the letter. The ISI and Pakistan’s military have not responded to the letter yet. Neither Pakistan’s law ministry nor the military’s media wing responded to queries media, seeking their responses to the allegations in the letter.
The cases of alleged intimidation and coercion by the judges in “politically consequential” cases relate to those against the main opposition leader and jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
