https://arab.news/n2qtg
- Court directs authorities to submit affidavits from heads of intelligence agencies confirming no political cells exist
- Political parties and critics often accuse that ISI spy agency interferes in politics and government in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government on Tuesday informed the Supreme Court “political cells” were no longer active in any intelligence agency of the country, as the top court directed authorities to submit affidavits by spy agency heads to attest they had no political functions, state-run media reported.
Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has long been accused of political interference including influencing elections, forming alliances, manipulating political parties and harassing opponents. The army denies it interferes in politics.
Former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali, the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party, has been credited with strengthening the ISI’s role in domestic politics and creating political cells that monitored opposition parties and managed political activities to consolidate his power.
The political role of intelligence agencies once more came in the spotlight in 1996 when Air Marshal Asghar Khan filed a case in the Supreme Court accusing the ISI of distributing funds to political parties to influence the outcome of the 1990 general elections. In 2012, the Supreme Court confirmed that the ISI had indeed funded certain political candidates to weaken the Pakistan Peoples Party. Despite the ruling, no action was taken against those involved, raising concerns about the accountability of intelligence agencies in Pakistan.
A seven-member constitutional bench of the Supreme Court heard the Asghar Khan case again on Tuesday, where the additional attorney general informed the court that its previous judgment in the case had already been implemented, political cells in intelligence agencies had been closed and no evidence of the distribution of cash among politicians had been found.
“The federal government has informed the Supreme Court of Pakistan that no political cell is functioning under any intelligence agency,” the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) said.
“The court directed the government to obtain a fresh affidavit from the heads of the intelligence agencies that no political cell is working under their management if such an affidavit is not already obtained.”
The Supreme Court also urged the Federal Investigation Agency to prove that the top court’s judgment in the Asghar Khan case had been implemented and directed the Ministry of Defense, under whose ambit the ISI falls, to submit a report in this regard before the next hearing.
Besides Bhutto, other Pakistani rulers have also been accused of using the ISI to influence political outcomes. It is widely believed that military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq used the agency to unite all opposition parties into an alliance against Bhutto’s PPP.
During the post-Zia period, when President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1990, the reasons officially stated were charges of corruption, failure to work with the provinces and attempts to question the powers of the armed forces. However Benazir said it was the ISI that plotted her government’s downfall.
In more recent years, the parties of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have also accused intelligence agencies of working against them.