Imran Khan Acknowledges Losing Secret Cable of Pakistani Government

According to media reports on Sunday, while being questioned by Pakistan’s top investigative agency at the Attock Jail in a case brought under the Official Secrets Act for improper use of the classified document, imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan admitted misplacing a private diplomatic cable.

Khan, 70, was convicted by a court in a corruption case earlier this month and is now serving a three-year prison term. The relevant communication was the same one that Khan had long used as proof of a US-backed plot to depose him as prime minister last year.

Days before he was dismissed as prime minister in April 2022, Khan had flashed a paper at a rally and claimed it was evidence of a foreign plot. Days before being questioned on the case, the head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act for disclosing the contents of a private diplomatic cable from the nation’s embassy in the US.

According to reports in the media, the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) CTW visited the former prime minister in prison on Saturday. According to FIA sources, a six-person joint investigation team headed by Deputy Director Ayaz Khan visited Khan in the deputy superintendent’s office of the Attock Jail and questioned him for more than an hour, according to the Dawn daily.

According to The News newspaper, Khan confessed to losing the cypher during questioning and said he couldn’t remember where he had placed it. Khan also refuted claims that the diplomatic cable was the piece of paper he held up as evidence of the plot at a public event last year, just days before his administration was overthrown.

The report cited Khan as adding, “The paper I gestured in public were Cabinet meeting minutes and not cypher.” After learning that Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the deputy chairman of the PTI and a former foreign minister, had intentionally misused the cypher and misplaced it, an investigating agency had filed a complaint against them.

The FIR further said that the probe will identify the involvement of the former planning minister Asad Umar, Azam Khan, the former prime minister’s senior secretary, and other allies.

On August 19, police detained Qureshi, a close friend of Khan’s, from his home in this city. On Saturday, Khan was interrogated regarding Qureshi’s allegations. Khan has been accusing the US of planning a plot to overthrow his administration while citing the cypher. Such accusations have been repeatedly refuted by the US, which has called them “categorically false.”

An account of a discussion between Asad Majeed Khan, a former Pakistani diplomat, and Donald Lu, assistant secretary of state for the bureau of south and central asian affairs, was included in the so-called cypher.

Following the publishing of a supposed copy of the secret cable by the US media site The Intercept, the former cricketer-turned-politician came under heightened scrutiny, with many in the previous administration headed by Shehbaz Sharif blaming the PTI leader for being the source of the leak. According to the former interior minister Rana Sanaullah, if Khan had truly misplaced the copy of the cipher that had been given to him, it would be illegal under the Official Secrets Act.

In a piece released earlier this month, The Intercept cited the cypher and said that “the US State Department encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” However, the newspaper also acknowledged that despite its best efforts, it was unable to independently establish the authenticity of the document due to Pakistan’s unstable security situation.

The US State Department has previously said that it was unable to confirm the document’s validity. After his main secretary, Azam Khan, claimed in front of a judge and the FIA that the former premier had utilized the US cypher for his “political gains” and to avoid a no-confidence vote against him last year, the cypher case against Khan took a severe turn.

Imran was detained and sent to Attock Jail on August 5 after being declared guilty in the Toshakhana corruption case by a trial court. The PTI leader was also disqualified for five years by Additional Sessions Judge Humayun Dilawar, thereby terminating his chances of running in the forthcoming general elections, the dates of which have not yet been announced.

After Khan was removed from office last year, dozens of lawsuits were filed against him. If his sentence in the Toshakhana case is suspended, it is thought that the FIA may arrest him in the cypher case.