LONDON - Mansoor Ijaz on Tuesday urged Hussain Haqqani to cooperate with the judicial panel probing the memo sandal and hand over his BlackBerry data for speedy conclusion of the probe, reported a private TV channel.
In a statement, Ijaz said that he had, for three days, testified at the Pakistan High Commission in London “in a truthful and transparent manner.” He said he had met every single request for transparency made by the chairman of the commission, Balochistan Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa.
“I was very helpful as I had placed on the record, under objection from opposing counsel at every possible turn, the data in my possession including handwritten notes, BlackBerry chat exchanges, emails and call logs of my interactions with Haqqani and others who worked with me to transmit the message he had asked me to get to Admiral Mike Mullen.”
Ijaz said Haqqani has “failed to provide a single shred of evidence to the contrary”, failing to waive his BlackBerry privacy rights in the search for truth.
“He has failed to turn over his physical BlackBerry devices that were originally available to his ‘boss’ and now are magically nowhere to be found. He has failed to provide a single telephone log record to disprove my call records. And he has failed to provide access to his email box, as I did contemporaneously during the hearings last week.
“Rather than assisting in the search for truth, Haqqani continues to obstruct justice by using Pakistan’s govt media machinery to run a disinformation campaign against me that grabs headlines, seeks to lay blame at anyone’s feet except his own and attempts to divert attention away from the serious matters of his misconduct at hand.”
Ijaz revealed that his lawyers in the US and Pakistan have taken note of each of the “false allegations, incorrect facts and slanderous comments made”.
“We will redress these falsehoods directly and legally with each news outlet and blogger that engages in the Haqqani slander campaign against me when the search for truth is complete under the commission’s proceedings.  We reserve our full legal rights and rights of litigation against any offending party that has slandered or maligned me unjustly.
For the moment, we remain focused on bringing the full truth and nothing but the truth on the record. It is that truth which Haqqani and his ‘boss’ fear and that is why they continue to slander and malign me in every way possible.”
Ijaz said Haqqani alone is responsible for “the circus that this matter has become” as he could have “simply admitted his role and complicity when confronted with the facts in Nov by Pakistan’s PM, president, army chief and intelligence chief when he returned to Islamabad and resigned as ambassador.” The statement said that the course of justice began on the very date he refused to tell the truth.
“He can never clear his name at the expense of slandering others. He can only clear his name by telling the truth that he dictated the content, edited the written version and authorised the transmission of the Mullen Memorandum with the approval of his ‘boss’ that is the subject of the judicial commission’s investigation.”