RAWALPINDI  -  Pakistan’s former ambassador to United States, Asad Majeed, has said submitted before the court that there was no mention of ‘threat’ or ‘conspiracy’ in the secret cipher telegram sent last year from the Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C. to the Foreign Office in Islamabad.

The former envoy recorded his statement yesterday before a special court during the hear­ing of the controversial cipher case against former prime min­ister and PTI founding chairman Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi.

Special Court’s Judge Abual Hasnat Muhammad Zulqar­nain heard the cipher case. The court is holding trial of Imran Khan and PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi inside Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail for al­legedly manipulating the cipher for political gains in March 2022, ahead of a no-confidence motion that resulted in the end of the PTI’s rule. 

Besides Asad Majeed, five oth­er witnesses’ statements were also recorded during the hear­ing. The court has so far record­ed the statements of total of 25 witnesses in the case. Asad Ma­jeed informed the court that he served as Pakistan’s ambassador in the United States from January 2019 to March 2022.

He said that on March 7, 2022, American Assistant Secretary Donald Lu was invited to a work­ing lunch. Asad Majeed clarified that the meeting had been pre-arranged and hosted at the Paki­stan House. The communication during the meeting was transmit­ted via the cipher telegram to the secretary of the foreign affairs.

Deputy Head of Mission and Defence Attaché were also pres­ent during the meeting.

It was known to both sides that the minutes of the meeting were being taken. Asad Majeed re­vealed that the cipher telegram conversation during the meeting was reported to Islamabad.

The ambassador said, “I was summoned to the National Secu­rity Committee meeting, where a proposal to issue a demarche was made. The cipher issue was a chal­lenge for the Pak-US relations.”

Former Principal Secretary Azam Khan, while recording his statement on January 18, had mentioned that the Secretary Foreign Office had handed the copy of the cipher to former for­eign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. He had suggested pre­senting the matter before the then prime minister Imran Khan the next morning, and after ob­taining a copy from the Foreign Office, they had gone to the Prime Minister’s office, he said.

Azam also told the court that the copy of the cipher had been misplaced by Imran. He claimed that Imran Khan had directed his mili­tary secretary and per­sonal staff a number of times to search for the ci­pher, but then he waved a piece of paper in the pub­lic rally held in Islamabad on March 27 ‘implying’ that it was the diplomat­ic cipher. Referring to the incident, the former bu­reaucrat had, however, clarified that “as he [Im­ran Khan] did not open or read it [in the rally], there­fore, I do not know what the paper was.” Besides Asad Majeed, other offi­cials including Faisal Ter­mizi, and Secretary Inte­rior Akbar Durrani were among the other witness­es who recorded their statements. A day earlier, former foreign secretary Sohail Mahmood also re­corded his statement, say­ing that he retired as the foreign secretary in Sep­tember 2022. Till that time, the Prime Minis­ter’s Office had not re­turned the cipher copy to the Ministry of Foreign Af­fairs, he said. The further hearing of the case was adjourned till tomorrow. The defence lawyer would conduct a cross-exam­ination of the witnesses in the next hearing. It is pertinent to mention here that the federal investiga­tion agency (FIA) had reg­istered a case against for­mer prime minister and others under the Official Secrets Act for making the diplomatic document public.