According to details, FIA team comprising of Deputy Director Wajid Zia and his assistant Maqsood ul Hassan visited Musharraf’s residence in Karachi’s Defense on Tuesday morning.
It took the FIA officials more than an hour to record the statement of former military dictator. On the occasion, stern security arrangements were made around the residence of Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf.
Pervez Musharraf was charged with treason for suspending the constitution and illegally imposing an emergency in 2007.
Proclaimed emergency after consulting with General Kayani
According to details of the statement that he recorded, Former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf claimed that he invoked the November 3, 2007 emergency after holding consultations with the then chief of army staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the senior civilian and military hierarchy.
Musharraf said that General Kayani was a “principal offender” in the case. His logic was that Kayani became army chief on November 27, 2007 and did not revoke the emergency which also made him a “principal offender”.
Gen Musharraf claimed that he also consulted then prime minister Shaukat Aziz and even then law minister Zahid Hamid, who is currently the minister for climate change in the current government. He said further that he also consulted with Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar and all the judges who had taken oath under the PCO, “all senior members of the armed forces in particular General Kayani, all chief ministers, all governors, all members of the federal and provincial cabinets, all members of the federal and provincial legislative assemblies, all senior federal and provincial bureaucrats” and that all these “are principal offenders or aiders, abettors, collaborators and facilitators”.
The former president also said that he proclaimed the Emergency on the advice of then prime minister Aziz but that the summary had “mysteriously” been removed from the official record by some “quarters concerned”.
Gen Musharraf claimed that Shaukat Aziz wanted imposition of emergency through the abovementioned letter, but “I plainly declined to do so and maintained that I could only act upon the advice of the then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz if he were to properly send me a summary in term of the Rules of Business. As a sequel to his letter dated November 3, 2007, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz sent me a summary directly by hand, through his staff, which was received by me (Gen Musharraf) in the President House”.
Musharraf also said that he told the JIT that “no case is made out against me as I acted upon the advice of the then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his cabinet in imposing the emergency”.
