ISLAMABAD -The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Friday deferred the hearing in former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt General (retired) Asad Durrani’s petition seeking removal of his name from the ECL. A single bench of IHC comprising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani conducted hearing of the petition filed by the former spymaster and directed the Ministry to submit its reply in this connection. During the hearing, the bench expressed its annoyance over absence of Additional Attorney General (AAG) Tariq Khokher and adjourned the hearing till January 22 for further proceedings. In his petition, Durrani adopted that the interior ministry did not decide his representation for review of its decision on his travel ban. He requested the IHC to initiate contempt of court proceeding against interior secretary for not complying with the court direction and order the interior ministry to decide the matter immediately.
The Military Intelligence (MI) had written to the interior ministry in 2018 to put Durrani’s name on the Exit Control List (ECL) for co-authoring a book, The Spy Chronicles, with Amarjit Singh Dulat, a former chief of the Indian spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).