Haqqani meets lawyer on SC orders ‘amid tight security’

In compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court, former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani was brought to the court under a tight security cover on Thursday to meet his lawyer Asma Jahangir to submit his rejoinder.
During the hearing of the memo case, when the SC inquired Asma about the rejoinder of his client, she said she was facing difficulties in contacting him. She told the court that she was not being allowed to meet Haqqani on the pretext of security reasons. To a court query, she said Haqqani was being kept under tight security. “It is a violation of human rights,” the chief justice noted and directed Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq to immediately arrange Asma’s meeting with her client. “Don’t worry, nobody will dare touch your client,” the chief justice told Asma. “Gone are the days when people were kept in illegal custody,” Justice Jawwad S Khawaja remarked. Therefore, complying with the SC orders, Haqqani was brought to the SC in a bulletproof car under tight security cover through the public entry gate at 1pm.
When he reached the premises, he was not allowed to talk to reporters and was escorted by plainclothesmen to the attorney general’s office, where he met Asma. The attorney general was present in the meeting, which continued from 1:15pm to 4:40pm.
Upon reaching the SC, Haqqani, who seemed to be very nervous and weak, made a victory sign to the reporters.
Asma calls memo ‘highly politicised’: Meanwhile, Asma Jahangir has said that the memogate issue was “highly politicised”, but the people were enlightened enough to realise it.
Talking to journalists at the Supreme Court after holding a meeting with Haqqani, she said the whole nation knew well who leaked the issue. She criticised the memo, saying it had no sanctity and that it had come from Mansoor Ijaz, who had been writing articles against Pakistan.
Referring to the former envoy’s stance, Asma said Haqqani had rejected claims about his links with Ijaz, the main character behind the controversy.
She said her client had also rejected the claims that the president and the prime minister were linked with the memo. About Haqqani’s resignation, she said the former ambassador had agreed to resign because he had been made a controversial figure due to media hype and would not be able to discharge his duties as an effective envoy. She said that they were not against a probe but only wanted to convey to the Supreme Court that the due course should be adopted.