By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday granted bail to Senator Azam Khan Swati, a close aide of ousted prime minister Imran Khan, who had been in custody over his controversial tweets against the military.
Senator Swati, a lawmaker of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was arrested November for accusing Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa of legitimising corruption of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his family
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had booked and arrested the senator in Islamabad over a “highly obnoxious campaign of intimidating tweets … against state institutions”.
Earlier this month, the senator had approached a special court in Islamabad for bail, which was rejected, following which he filed a post-arrest bail petition in the IHC. The court approved Swati’s bail against the submission of surety bonds worth Rs200,000.
Swati, in his plea, said he was “falsely implicated due to political influences of a hostile regime” and the cases against him were registered with malafide intention.
The petition stated that the entire case against the senator consisted of a “documented allegation” and that there was no “useful purpose” of keeping him in custody.
It recalled that Swati was earlier remanded into FIA’s custody but nothing “incriminating” was recovered from him and hence he was sent to jail on judicial remand.
The petition said the senator was abducted from the Pims Hospital later — where he was taken for medical treatment — in the “aircraft of IG Police Balochistan”. “However, during the course of physical remand, the honourable Balochistan High Court was pleased to quash all the FIRs (registered against him) in two petitions.”
The court had also barred the police from filing further cases against him.
“But he [Swati] was again kidnapped in other FIRs lodged against him in Sindh,” the petition said. Later the Singh High Court (SHC) had placed all the FIRs against him in C-class.
The plea also pointed out that the “alleged tweets were not posted by the petitioner nor he had any intention to defame any respectable institution” and that the prosecution had no evidence against him.
Subsequently, it requested that Swati should be granted post-arrest bail till the conclusion of the trial “in the best interest of justice”.
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