Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s legal team in the UK has initiated action against The Sunday Times newspaper after it published an article entitled ‘Imran the Inevitable’ on November 20, 2011. The said article had claimed that Imran Khan met US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter in the presence of Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) chief General Ahmed Shuja Pasha. The article had also claimed that the PTI chief is enjoying the support of Pakistan’s military.
PTI UK Coordinator Rabia Zia told Pakistan Today that Khan’s solicitor in London Mahtab Aziz has written to The Sunday Times regarding the article, saying that the article has damaged the PTI chief’s “political standing and reputation among the Pakistani public by implying that he is backed by the Pakistan army, which directly goes against Khan’s principles and political ideology that he stands for and for which he has made many sacrifices”.
The letter stressed that Khan will always be independent of “any influence by the vested interests of Pakistan’s powerful military and establishment”. Mahtab Aziz said that Imran Khan has taken this issue very seriously and felt very aggrieved about the article’s main theme, accusing the paper of going “against the grain of our client’s political vision”. He said, “There is neither any support for Khan’s campaign by Pakistan’s security establishment, nor have you furnished any evidence to support it,” adding that PTI believed that change in Pakistan can come by “severing the shackles of the establishment”.
The letter gives a reference to both Ambassador Cameron Munter’s denial on the news programme Capital Talk and Military Spokesman Major General Ather Abbas’s denial that any such meeting had taken place. The defamation claim says that Khan met Munter on various occasions but the “factual inaccuracy” in reporting has “damaged our client’s standing among the Pakistani public as it implies that there is tacit support for Khan’s campaign not only by the United States but also by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)”.
Imran for legal action against Sunday Times
