ISI operative and lobbyist Ghulam Nabi Fai is a well respected person in Pakistan and the FBI should make the proof of his being a spy public, Interior minister Rehman Malik said on the sidelines of the Fourth meeting of SAARC interior/home ministers.
“Dr Fai, as per my information, is a very well respected person in Pakistan…(he has done) a lot of social work. He is in-charge of one of our very renowned hospitals and his reputation is very good. If FBI has the proof of him being a spy, it should be made public,” he said.
The FBI on Tuesday arrested Fai, the director of the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), for illegally lobbying for Pakistan in the US.
“…transacting any amount for social work or NGO purposes is totally different. Now as far as lobbying is concerned, I believe lobbying is legal in United States. Most of the governments have their lobbyists to work for them so I do not know the context in which the FBI has acted against him. I will comment further after I have seen the report,” he added.
“If he was accused, the arrest should have taken place after court proceedings and not on heresy,” he said, adding that he will have to see the report to know the exact allegations.
SAARC ADDRESS: While addressing the conference, Malik suggested that an Interpol-like constitution needed to be adopted in SAARC to eliminate terrorism and a joint Task Force needed to be formed to control pirates in the Indian Ocean.
He said Pakistan had suffered heavily in the ‘war on terror’ and in the last ten years it had witnessed over seven thousand explosions and suicide bombings while more than thirty-five thousand people had lost their lives, adding that Pakistan had banned over 31 organisations in its effort to curb extremism. He also lauded Bhutan for its economic progress.
‘US arrest of Fai long overdue’: NEW DELHI
AFP
The arrest of a man accused of acting as a Pakistani government agent in the United States “was long overdue” India’s home secretary said on Saturday, according to a report. Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, a US citizen detained on Tuesday, is suspected of links to a decades-long effort that allegedly funnelled millions of dollars to Washington to lobby US politicians on behalf of Kashmiri causes. Commenting on Fai’s arrest, India’s Home Secretary RK Singh said: “Yes, his arrest was long overdue,” the Press Trust of India reported.
Fai has been a prominent figure in the politics of Indian Kashmir, racked by a more than two-decade insurgency against New Delhi’s rule. The US Justice Department said Fai and Zaheer Ahmad, 63, a US citizen and a resident of Pakistan, face five years in prison if found guilty. “We had a fair degree of suspicion that the money he (Fai) used to get was given by the agencies in Pakistan,” Singh said on the sidelines of regional security conference in the Bhutanese capital Thimpu.