No coup was planned after May 2 raid: Pasha

Former director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) General Ahmad Shuja Pasha on Thursday stood by his affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court earlier, and dispelled the impression of a possible military coup after the May 2 Abbottabad raid, saying had there been such a plan, the ISI would have known of it.
In his cross examination, the former DG ISI said that he was not convinced when Husain Haqqani, during a meeting at the Prime Minister’s House, challenged the screen shots of Mansoor Ijaz’s blackberry as fake. “It was just a statement by Haqqani and no body had access to his blackberry sets to ascertain the veracity of his statement,” he added.
In reply to a question, Pasha said that he had no reason to agree with Haqqani’s counsel Zahid Bukhari’s suggestion that Manoor Ijaz had prepared a plot (in the form of the memorandum) to malign the ISI, Army and Pakistan. To another question, Pasha said what he saw on the screen of Ijaz’s handset (BBMs exchanged between Haqqani and Ijaz) did not look fabricated, adding that the matter could be better judged by a forensic expert. Pasha endorsed Ijaz’s testimony about their meeting at Park Lane Hotel in London. “Mansoor Ijaz showed me the blackberry messages exchanged between him and ambassador Haqqani,” he added. As Haqqani did not appear before the commission, it observed that the former ambassador to the US was “in disobedience of the tribunal’s orders”, and rejected his application for adjournment as an “unjustified demand”.
Justice Qazi Isa, chairman of the memo commission, told Haqqani’s counsel that if his client was ill for the last three years, then he should not have taken up the important job of an ambassador. He further said that Haqqani had earlier undertaken before the Supreme Court that he would appear before the commission on a four-day notice whenever he was summoned.
Pasha said there was no military coup planned after the May 2 incident and added that this allegation was one of the reasons that prompted him to go to London and meet Mansoor Ijaz to verify what he had claimed in his Financial Times article, as it was giving a false impression of a tension between the military and civilian leadership of the country. The former ISI chief said that he needed no permission to travel to London to meet Mansoor Ijaz. He said that during their meeting in London, Ijaz did not mention Haqqani and President Asif Ali Zardari as the authors of the alleged memorandum.
On the contents of the memo, Pasha said that “boots on ground” and “foreign input on the proposed national security team” were the most disturbing issues for him than the elimination of the “S Wing” of the ISI. To a question, he said that it was not for him to ascertain what Ijaz was, and what he was up to, as the contents of the memorandum were the most important thing for him. “It is incorrect that the relationship between the civilian and military leadership of the country was strained after the May 2 incident,” Pasha said.
He said the ISI did not probe the matter further after bringing it to the notice of the president, the prime minister and the chief of army staff, as it was a very sensitive matter, adding that if he had done so, it could have generated a lot of speculations and controversy.
Pasha continued that he had held a meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari on November 18 on the memo issue and briefed him about his meeting with Mansoor Ijaz. “I informed him (President) that the matter was very sensitive and needed to be probed further,” he added.
Expressing displeasure, the commission’s chairman told Haqqani’s counsel that his client got an appointment for MRI/CT tests for April 4 at a US hospital, but had not informed the commission about the same on the last hearing of March 26. “If he is so sick, how did he perform his duties as the ambassador of the country,” Justice Isa asked Bukhari. “In short, he has chosen not to come. Your client is in disobedience of the tribunal’s orders and his own affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court,” he observed. Earlier, Bukhari said that the matter was sub-judice before the Supreme Court. The commission, however, rejected Haqqani’s application as an “unjustified demand”.