ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Asad Umar has been arrested from Islamabad in the cipher case, sources told JEE News on Sunday, as authorities stepped up efforts to solve the crucial case.
Omar’s arrest comes a day after senior party leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi and PTI Chairman Imran Khan were arrested in connection with the investigation.
Khan – who was ousted in a parliamentary vote in April last year – alleged on March 27, 2022 that Washington had planned to remove him from office – and used the cipher at a public rally to support his claims. marked The US has repeatedly denied such allegations and termed them as “blatant lies”.
Both Qureshi and Khan were booked following a First Information Report (FIR) against the PTI chairman – lodged by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) – under the Official Secrets Act, 1923. Section 5 was applied.
Umar has been a close aide of the PTI chief and earlier held the post of the party’s general secretary. However, following his arrest during the May 9 riots, in which PTI activists attacked government and military installations, he resigned from his party posts.
“Given the current situation […] after May 9, it is not possible for me personally to continue to perform my party leadership duties,” the former federal minister said.
“I am resigning as Secretary General and Core Committee member of PTI. One of the reasons is […] I am speechless and if I hold a position, I will continue to make personal statements. Can’t.”
Cable gate
The controversy first emerged on 27 March 2022, when Khan – days before his ouster – published a letter, which he claimed came from a foreign nation, in which his government There was mention of removing him from power.
He did not reveal the contents of the letter or name the nation that sent it. But days later, he named the United States and said Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lowe had called for his removal.
This cipher was about the meeting of Asad Majeed, the former ambassador of Pakistan to America, with Lowe.
Claiming that he was reading the material from the cipher, the former prime minister said that “all will be forgiven for Pakistan if Imran Khan is removed from power”.
Then on March 31, the NSC took up the matter and decided to issue a “strong demarche” to the country for “blatant interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs”.
Later, after his dismissal, the then Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif convened a meeting of the NSC, which concluded that there was no evidence of foreign conspiracy.
The cypher case against the former prime minister turned serious when his principal secretary Azam Khan testified before a magistrate and the FIA that the former prime minister had “political advantage” and to prevent a no-confidence vote against him. American cipher was used for this. .
The ex-bureaucrat said in his confession that he was “happy” when he provided the cipher to the former prime minister and called the language “an American mistake”. According to Azam, the former prime minister then said the cable could be used to “create a narrative against the establishment and the opposition”.
Azam said the PTI chairman used American ciphers in political gatherings, despite his advice to refrain from such acts. He mentioned that the former prime minister had also told him that the cipher could be used to draw public attention to “foreign involvement” in the opposition’s no-confidence motion.
