By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A former top aide to Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, has accused him of using a secret document from the United States to fuel his anti-establishment campaign and undermine the country’s relations with its key ally, according to an alleged confession that surfaced on Wednesday.
The aide, Azam Khan, who served as Khan’s principal secretary until April 2022, said in a statement that the former premier had obtained a cipher — a coded message — from Pakistan’s mission in Washington that contained sensitive information about the US policy toward Pakistan and the region.
Khan, who was ousted by the parliament in April after losing a parliamentary confidence vote, allegedly used the cipher to claim that the US was conspiring against his government with opposition parties to replace him.
The statement, which was reportedly recorded under oath before a magistrate, was made public by Rana Sanaullah, the interior minister, who called it a “charge sheet” against Khan and said he should be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for mishandling classified information.
Minister Sanaullah also said that the Federal Investigation Agency had summoned former premier to appear before it on July 25 in connection with the cipher probe.
Khan, who leads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, dismissed the statement as a fabrication and said he would not believe it until he heard it from Azam Khan himself. He said Mr. Azam was an honest man who had been abducted by the authorities to pressure him into implicating him.
The former principal secretary returned home on Wednesday night, hours after minister Sanaullah’s press conference, but his lawyer said he was “not in a condition” to comment on the matter.
Azam Khan’s disappearance on June 15 had sparked protests by PTI party and a petition in the Islamabad High Court seeking his recovery.
According to the statement attributed to Azam Khan, he was approached by the foreign secretary on March 8 and informed about the cipher, which had been discussed with Khan by Shah Mehmood Qureshi, then the foreign minister.
The statement said that the former premier was “euphoric” after seeing the cipher and decided to use it to build an “anti-establishment narrative” based on a “blunder” committed by the US.
The statement claimed that Khan did not return the original cipher, despite repeated requests, and told Azam Khan that he had misplaced it.
It also said that Azam Khan had advised Khan not to disclose the contents of the cipher since it was a confidential document.
Sanaullah said that Khan’s actions had damaged Pakistan’s national security and its ties with the US, which provides billions of dollars in aid and military assistance to Islamabad.
He compared the case to the proceedings initiated against former President Donald J. Trump for mishandling classified documents.
He also alleged that Khan still had the cipher in his possession and that he would be arrested and the document would be recovered.
The former prime minister, however, said he would reveal the “uncensored details” of the secret document from the US that he allegedly used to fuel his anti-establishment campaign and undermine the country’s relations with its key ally.
Khan was responding to the allegations made by Minister Sanaullah.
“I will share with you the uncensored details of how this drama was staged to topple a democratically elected government,” he wrote on Twitter. “I assure you, it will be more gripping than any drama on TV.”
A PTI spokesman also dismissed the allegations as a “pack of lies” and said that Khan had already explained how the government was “forcing incarcerated and missing” party leaders to become approvers against him.
He said that the alleged statement of Sanaullah would be disastrous for Pakistan’s national security interests and that the cipher had been authenticated by the National Security Committee (NSC), which comprises civil and military leadership, in two meetings held under Khan and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The spokesman also said the NSC had termed the cipher an “interference into Pakistan’s internal matters” and that the US was handed a demarche, a formal diplomatic protest. He added that the federal cabinet had reviewed the cipher ahead of the NSC meeting and declared it as a declassified document.
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