ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif launched a full-scale legal
attack on the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) stressing that its report
presented to the Supreme Court was an eyewash and was undertaken with a
predisposed mind to malign and implicate him in some wrongdoing.
Except the representative of the Military Intelligence in the JIT,
the premier, in his rejection of the team, assailed the credibility and
standing of its other five members, painting them as biased, partisan and
affiliated with his political rivals.
It is submitted with respect that one of the more aggressive
members of the JIT (Brig Nauman Saeed), whose depiction was given in one of the
earlier applications (CMA No.3688 of 2017 submitted before the bench), was
subsequently identified to be the ISI nominee,identified to be the ISI nominee,
Nawaz Sharif’s response said.
It said that it has further been revealed that the ISI nominee was
not its officer at the time of his nomination, rather he was a ‘source
employee’ under a contract which is not recognized as legal, and reportedly
neither his association with the spy agency nor his pay is reflected in any official
record.
Meanwhile, the two latest prayers made by Nawaz Sharif – absolute
rejection of the JIT findings and release of Volume-X – were not taken up on
the first day of the attention-grabbing proceedings. The petitioners’ lawyers
completed their preliminary arguments on the JIT report and the premier’s
counsel Khawaja Haris opened his submissions. The pace thus observed gave the
impression as if the case may not take too long to conclude.
The prime minister also pointed out the charges against JIT members
– Bilal Rasool and Amer Aziz – for being prejudiced against him. The Sharif
family has already highlighted these claims against them.
Inside the courtroom, Justice Ejaz Afzal asked: Without knowing
what the sources are, can we say that the documents are accurate? He said that
it would have to be verified whether the documents procured from abroad were
transferred to Pakistan through legal means. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)
attorney Naeem Bokhari said it was for the JIT to reply this question. He sought
summoning of the prime minister and his family members for cross-examination.
However, not only Bokhari, but the Jamaat-e-Islami lawyer and
Sheikh Rashid completely owned the JIT report because it incorporated all of
their accusations and allegations against the Sharif family. They were
tremendously facilitated as they were not required to give any new argument but
spoke on what the JIT has held. They repeated what has been written in its
findings. However, the bench made it clear that it was not binding on the
judges to accept the JIT report and pointed out that some of the documents that
have been relied upon in the report were not authenticated and certified.
In his rejection application, Nawaz Sharif said the hiring of UK
based litigation firm Quist London, a company admittedly belonging to one
Akhtar Raja, a cousin of JIT head Wajid Zia, whose owner is also reportedly a
worker of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) London, is illegal and unsupported
by law and does not qualify as permissible in terms of Mutual Legal Assistance
(MLA) under Section 21(g) of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999.
Justice Ejaz Afzal remarked that if need be the Volume-X of the
JIT report, incorporating MLA requests, can be made public so that everything
was transparent. Nawaz Sharif demanded release of the volume.
Another ground of rejection of the JIT report, according to the
premier, was that the respondents were never shown any documents during the
recording of their statements and, thus, none of them was confronted with or
called upon to explain their position vis-à-vis any of these papers. It is thus
evident that the entire investigation was a farce.
The JIT members, the prime minister wrote, exceeded their
jurisdiction and authority conferred by law in obtaining documents from abroad,
inter alia, by hiring private firms, and thereby wasted public time and money
in rendering an incomplete, inconclusive and legally untenable and inherently
defective report.
The JIT overstepped its jurisdiction in giving a detailed finding
on each of the 13 questions (+2 non-existent queries claimed by the JIT to have
been) referred to it by the April 20 Order of the Court, in that as an
investigation body, and as per the terms of the court order, it was appointed
only to collect evidence on each of the questions referred, and not to
pronounce a judgment or prepare findings on the basis of the evidence so
collected, the latter being the prerogative of the court as it constituted a
judicial function.
Nawaz Sharif said that the MLA requests were to be addressed to a
foreign state and not to private firms or entities, and such evidence and
documents alone are inadmissible in evidence under Section 21(g) of the NAO
(this provision having been specifically quoted by the JIT) as are transferred
to Pakistan by a foreign government, and not that which are procured from or
delivered by private firms.
He believed that not only the bulk of the documents relied upon by
the JIT especially from foreign jurisdictions, have been illegally procured,
none of them bears the attestation in accordance with the law nor are any of
them is original, and most of them do not bear the signatures of any executant
or scribe, while no statement of any witness who scribed, executed or witnessed
any of these papers has been recorded by the JIT.
The premier said that in any case the JIT had been given 60 days
for completing their investigation, and they having availed an extra 6 days on
this account, and having represented before the court on July 10 that they are
submitting a complete report, they cannot now be allowed to place any further
document on the record.
The JIT report is reflective of the ingrained bias and prejudice
of its members towards and against the prime minister, he said.
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