There are many advantages to having an official function as your Principal Secretary. However, there is the disadvantage that he may turn approver, which is to say, he may confess to your wrongdoing, in which he had a share, and thereby entrap you in something untoward. That is what Azam Khan has done to Imran Khan, whose Secretary he was when the latter was PM. His confessional statement is not really new, for an audio leak has revealed that the PM ‘had played’ with the cipher which Mr Khan used to show that USA had connived with the then Opposition and the establishment to overthrow Mr Khan. However, it should not be forgotten that Zulikar Ali Bhutto was convicted because of the confessional statement of Masood Mahmood, the DG of the Federal Security Force, who turned approver to say that Mr Bhutto had ordered the killing of Ahmad Raza Kasuri, whose father Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan was murdered instead. The making of a statement under Section 169 CrPC, which is before a magistrate who has assured himself that no duress has been applied, means that the witness is bound by that statement, but he has to repeat it in court, so that the accused’s counsel may cross-examine.
Legal technicalities aside, the statement throws into doubt the entire narrative that Mr Khan has built. It would be fair if Mr Khan felt that this was ancient history, because he himself has moved on, because somewhere along the line, he might have realized that dragging in the USA was not a very good idea, no matter how much the establishment and the coalition could be targeted. However, Mr Azam’s claim that Mr Khan had not returned the cipher after taking it, also creates the suspicion that there be liability under the Official Secrets Act involved. The PTI’s reaction can only be diescribed as angry. Clearly, someone there has realized that if Mr Azam’s confession can be used to disprove Mr Khan’s narrative, then his removal by the Opposition was the result of a constitutional procedure, with no foreign conspiracy in the background. Mr Azam;s confessional statement comes hot on the heels of the first public defence of Donald Lu, the State Department official accused of making the threats against Mr Khan in the impugned cipher, with a denial by the State Department spokeswoman saying that the denial had been conveyed both publicly and privately. However, this is the first denial of Mr Lu’s involvement. It is a mark of the polarization of the country that Mr Azam’s statement is either to be accepted by opponents of Mr Khan, or dismissed by his supporters.
