AG writes to embassy in US to locate Haqqani’s phones

As the three-member judicial commission to probe the memo issue meets here today, Attorney General (AG) Maulvi Anwarul Haq has asked Pakistan’s embassy in Washington to locate the BlackBerry smartphones of former ambassador Husain Haqqani and send them to Pakistan.
“The Attorney General has written a letter to Pakistan’s embassy in Washington on behalf of Husain Haqqani to locate his BlackBerry sets and we are waiting for the response from the United States,” a source close to Haqqani told Pakistan Today on Sunday.
On January 9, Haqqani had told the commission that he was unaware of the location of the communication devices and they might be somewhere in Washington. The source said as Pakistan-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz seemed reluctant to face the commission and answer the queries from Haqqani’s lawyers, the legal team of the former ambassador would ask the three-member commission today to wrap up the investigation. He said it seemed that the accuser had failed to substantiate the allegations levelled against the former ambassador and the petitions were nothing but political point-scoring maneuvers of their movers. Whether Ijaz has arrived in Pakistan or will do so in the near future still remains a mystery. His lawyer, Akram Sheikh, did not comment on the matter.
“Why do you ask me this particular question?” he said. During the previous hearing, the commission had directed Pakistan’s embassy in Bern (Switzerland) and High Commission in London to issue a multiple-entry visa to Ijaz as soon as he applied, after his lawyer told the commission that his client would be available to testify on January 16. Haqqani’s lawyer Zahid Bukhari, however, told Pakistan Today that his client would not follow the “instructions” of Ijaz as he had asked him to waive his privacy rights with the Canada-based manufacturer of BlackBerry phones, Research In Motion (RIM). “He (Mansoor) should first substantiate his allegations and then we can consider waiving the privacy rights,” he added.
Haqqani had said he might require the government’s approval to waive his privacy rights as he was “bound to observe the Official Secrets Act”. When asked if the commission decided to hold the proceedings abroad to record the Ijaz’s statement, Bukhari said Haqqani’s legal team would vigorously oppose the proposal and first seek time from the commission to review the decision under the prevailing laws. He said according to his information, Ijaz had yet not waived his privacy rights.