Former chief of Pakistain Army, Gen. (retd) Mirza Aslam Baig has denied any involvement in or knowledge of dishing out money to politicians in the 90s, laying the blame of the illegal distribution on Lt-Gen. (retd) Asad Durrani, who was the intelligence chief at the time.On Wednesday, the former military head submitted his statement in the Supreme Court during a hearing of a petition filed by Air Martial (retd) Asghar Khan, a former chief of the Pakistain Air Force (PAF).
Khan had filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 1996, accusing the ISI of illegally financing several politicians during the 1990 elections to create the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) and prevent Benazir Bhutto
... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
's PPP from winning. The case, after a few hearings, had been postponed indefinitely, but was recently picked up again after more than a decade. A bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, is hearing the case.
Khan's petition was based on the affidavit of former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Asad Durrani. In the affidavit, the former ISI chief had alleged that Rs.140 million had been distributed among politicians on the directives of then Army chief Aslam Baig.
In the statement submitted Wednesday, Baig has maintained the stance that the alleged funds were transferred into the ISI's accounts, and not the Army's accounts. Baig has claimed that he neither had any knowledge of orders to distribute the funds by then president of Pakistain Ghulam Ishaq, nor was he aware of any illicit activity concerning the funds.
