ISLAMABAD: Former interior minister Rehman Malik has requested Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to form a judicial commission in order to formally investigate the WikiLeaks’ allegation that he gave complete access of the country’s confidential NADRA records to the US.
He was speaking to reporters outside the Parliament House on Thursday.
WikiLeaks tweeted on June 6 about a diplomatic cable, leaked in 2011, which contained an account of meetings between former US Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano and top Pakistan officials, including Mr Malik.
If yesterday’s NSA report is accurate it is not unusual; US+MI6 set up a front to steal all of Pakistan’s voters https://t.co/T0Gc6hyyHr pic.twitter.com/oERYoferNo
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 6, 2017
Rehman called the report “totally baseless, factitious and fabricated”, and said that it was not possible for him to give access to the National Database and Registration Authority’s (Nadra) records to any country at all.
He claimed that when he was the interior minister, he never used to entertain requests for access to travel records of Pakistani nationals. He has requested the current Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to “investigate this fake news as it is a matter of grave concern for him and many Pakistanis”.
Mr Malik also claimed that Usman Mobin, the current Nadra chairman, was chief technical officer at the time, and could be contacted to see if records were given to any country at all.
However the cable, dated from 2009, claimed that Mr Malik, along with then-interior secretary Kamal Shah and then Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) director Tariq Khosa, had told Ms Napolitano that they might share passenger data for those travelling to and from Pakistan to the US and Canada.
