ISLAMABAD: The high court of Islamabad approved the request for the release on bail of Senator Azam Swati arrested in November in a case involving tweets critical of top army brass, including former chief retired Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, and featuring slurs.
The agency had arrested Swati on November 27, for a second time in less than two months, on charges of sending out the tweets after an anonymous Twitter user lodged a complaint over the post.
FIA had last detained the septuagenarian Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader in the second week of October in a midnight raid at his residence in Islamabad.
His lawyer, Babar Awan, alleged at the time that Swati’s house was raided without a search warrant. “He was blindfolded and treated like a terrorist,” he had told the press.
During the proceedings on Monday, Aamer Farooq, chief justice of the high court, approved his bail against the submission of surety bonds worth Rs200,000. He also stopped the FIA from arresting the senator.
Presenting arguments, Awan informed the judge the high courts of Sindh and Balochistan had quashed the cases against Swati. “All these complaints against him [Swati] have been taken out from pockets. I have never seen an FIR [first information report] in which the time and place are not mentioned,” he stated.
He also gave examples of previous cases in which politicians were granted bail on medical grounds.
Subsequently, Justice Farooq asked the counsel for FIA for his position on the matter. At this, he requested that the hearing should be adjourned as the special prosecutor was not present in court.
However, the court dismissed his request and reserved its verdict on Swati’s plea.
Swati had moved the petition on December 24, claiming the tweets in question, issued from his account, were in fact not posted by him.
His last request for bail was turned down by a junior judge who declared that Swati had “committed the same offence twice”.
The latest petition read the senator was “falsely implicated due to political influences of a hostile regime” and the complaints against him were registered with “malafide intention”.
