Ijaz accuses Haqqani of attempting to ‘wipe out evidence’

Mansoor Ijaz, the star witness in the memo scandal, on Friday alleged that former ambassador Husain Haqqani twice attempted to delete the conversations from his blackberry during the last six months by deleting from his own handset the Blackberry ID of the former, but failed.
“Haqqani deleted my BB ID from his handset in order to delete the chat exchanges (between me and him) in my hand set. Actually when you delete some particular BB ID from your handset and send a message to some other blackberry which is already containing the record of previous mutual conversation, the ID of all the previous messages will automatically be deleted. This is how blackberry works,” he conveyed to the memo commission as he continued his statement before the commission for the third consecutive day.
“He did not know I had de-commissioned the first handset (took the SIM card out of the set) and he remained failed in his attempt,” he added. In the second instance, he said, Haqqani also “deleted my ID from his handset to cause anomaly in chat exchanges, resident in my handset today”.
Ijaz said subsequent to events of May 2011, Haqqani twice changed his blackberry sets. Mansoor Ijaz along with his wife arrived at the Pakistan High Commission in London on the third day of recording his testimony with the commission probing the “memogate” scandal. Ijaz’s wife was also granted the permission to attend the session.
Furthering his statement before the commission, Mansoor Ijaz further established that he remained in contact with Haqqani, saying he made a phone call to Haqqani at Room# 430 of the Parkland Inter-continental Hotel London at 12:58 on May 9, 2011. Soon after, he continued, he called James Jones at his home number but did not reveal the number in fear of invasion of his privacy. Ijaz said that total 14 calls were made from his phone, out of which, 11 conference calls were made during May, 2011, between him, General James and Haqqani.
Narrating the sequence of messages exchange between him and Haqqani, Ijaz referred to a BBM in which he asked Haqqani: “You have done a good job why are you leaving the office (of the ambassador to the US). Haqqani responded, “If you thought that I had done good, inform my contacts in Washington DC that if they (US) want their problems resolved in Pakistan, I was their man to get it done”.
He said the purpose of his writing article in the Financial Times was to offer a policy description as to how to handle the alleged ISI complicity in attacks against the US interests in the region. He said Adm Mike Mullen in his testimony before the Senate Armed Serviced Committee on September 22 had made it clear that he had “credible intelligence” that ISI was responsible for certain attacks against US interests in the region. “In the article, I simply offered a solution to the problem,” he added.
Ijaz said within 30 minutes of appearing the FT article Haqqani messaged me, “This FT Op-ed of yours is a disaster.”
Before I could read the message, he added, Haqqani called me at Monaco as he was at that time back to Washington DC: “Please can you tell me which other senior Pakistan diplomat you knew in Pakistan, so that I could get the press hounds off his trail,” he asked me. “I told him he knew better than me who knows me in Pakistan,” he recalled as having responded to Haqqani. “He then abused me,” Ijaz further said. “Then in the next one week, there were long number of messages exchanged between us in which every possible effort was made through common friends to persuade me to not allow the actual memo or contents of the memo be seen public,” Ijaz said.
On account of his October 22 meeting with ISI DG Shujaa Pasha, Ijaz said it was held on the request of the DG. On a question of Pasha, Ijaz said he described him and Haqqani as “good friends” that worked together on many things during the last 10 years.
“Pasha asked me whether I was wiling to disclose the name of the senior Pakistani diplomat on which advice I authored the memo as I had mentioned in my article,” Ijaz said. He further said that “I made it crystal clear to him (Pasha) that ground realities in the country (Pakistan) may change in an undemocratic way”. However, Ijaz quoted Pasha as having responded to him that “ nobody more than myself and General Kayani want completion of tenure of the government (in Pakistan) but want to get to the bottom of the memo and what is was all about”.
He said before if left home for the meeting with Pasha, Haqqani called me from an unknown number to inform that Pasha was coming to London to meet with the editor of the Financial Times and collect the copy of the memo, adding that Haqqani asked me that FT should not hand over the copy of the memo to Pasha. Ijaz said Haqqani was not aware that Pasha was coming to London to meet him.
Ijaz submitted before the commission the four pages from his 39-page bill of the mobile phone which contained May 9 to May 11 in-coming and outgoing call log, to help the commission establish contacts and communication exchanges between him and Haqqani as he did not agree to exhibit the entire bill due to privacy reasons. He argued before the panel that his telephone was registered on his company’s name and that he could not reveal the bill’s entire content because it was private.
He also blackened the phone numbers from these four pages which were not relevant in the matter. He, however, agreed to submit all 39 pages of the bill to the commission on the condition that it doesn’t fall into public domain as he did not want breach of his privacy. He believed that the ‘other side’ was hell bent to damage his business interests. He gave bill of the number +4407730337711. He was directed to write letter to the phone company for provision of hard copy of the bill along with a certificate that the entries relating to incoming and outgoing phone calls mentioned in the four pages of the bill were correct.
Two of the four pages of the bill, he gave to the commission were to help rebut the claim of James Jones as he made in his affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court of Pakistan stating that Ijaz had contacted him a few days before May 9, 2011.
Ijaz said it could be verified from the bill copy that he did not make any call to James Jones during May 9-11. The commission also ordered the commission’s secretary to protect all the records and evidence provided by Ijaz so that it could be handed over to the commission in Pakistan on his return.