‘Missing’ cypher copy: FIR registered against PTI chief, Qureshi comes to light

ISLAMABAD: A first information report (FIR) registered against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan and vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi, for ‘deliberately missing a copy of the diplomatic cypher’, has come to light, ARY News reported on Saturday.

The first information report (FIR) – a copy of which is available with ARY News – was registered on August 15 under the Official Secrets Act. It was registered on the complaint of Home Secretary.

Former prime minister Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi were nominated in the report, while names of former principal secretary Azam Khan and former planning minister Asad Umar were also mentioned.

According to the report, action also will be taken against Azam Khan and Asad Umar after the authorities reached the conclusion that they were also involved in misusing the classified documents.

The FIR stated that former prime minister and foreign minister distorted the facts of the diplomatic cypher. “A conspiracy was launched to misuse the contents of the cypher to fulfill nefarious purposes”, it added. It further stated that former premier and top diplomat endangered the state interests.

The report claimed that former prime minister asked Azam Khan – the then principal secretary – to “manipulate the contents of cypher”. “The former premier deliberately kept the copy of diplomatic cypher, which was sent to the PM office”, it added.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) Counter Terrorism Wing registered a case against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief for allegedly missing a copy of the diplomatic cypher.

Read more: US again rejects claim of regime change in Pakistan

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the cypher case already will conduct the investigation.

‘PTI chairman’s narrative on cypher fall flat’

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman’s ‘conspiracy narrative’ on the US cypher has fallen flat after a story published in The Intercept confirmed it was just a ‘hard’ diplomatic language.

The PTI chairman and former prime minister had been alleging US involvement in throwing him out of power in 2022 on the basis of a cypher.

The Intercept in its story said the copy of cypher is not available to them nor any sources has confirmed the content of it after declassification.

The media outlet claimed that it tried to confirm the cypher document’s authenticity, but failed in doing so. The story published in Intercept resembles with the one earlier published in Pakistan’s English daily.

The report has proved that cypher was not a threat from US but a ‘hard’ diplomatic language. Furthermore, there is nothing new in the story and the content is same as the former prime minister had been claiming since his ouster.

The newspaper in its report has claimed that the statement attributed to Donald Lu was his thought but not was a ‘threat’ to the government, the same had been confirmed by the National Security Committee, which met twice to review the diplomatic cable.

It has now come to the fore that where the copy of the cypher was as earlier, the PTI chairman had been claiming that he was unaware of it. Action against the former prime minister under Official Secret Act is being demanded for violating the diplomatic norms by ‘leaking’ the cypher copy.