Imran Khan says General Faiz Hameed did not mastermind May 9 attacks

Former prime minister and PTI founder Imran Khan said on Saturday it was wrong to say that the former spymaster General (r) Faiz Hameed was the mastermind of attacks on government and military installations on May 9, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

Speaking to reporters at Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, the former prime minister said that PTI did not hatch conspiracies, in fact, it was the victim of these conspiracies.

Elaborating further, he said the first conspiracy hatched against the party was that the former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa removed General Faiz from his post at the insistence of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

The second, he went on to say, was that General Bajwa hired Hussain Haqqani to lobby against the PTI government in the USA for $35,000. “And that led to the cipher from US official Donald Lu which resulted in the ouster of our government in April 2022,” he said, adding, “The third intrigue was that we had requested the then chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) for an inquiry into the cipher. But unfortunately, we were implicated in that case instead.”

“The May 9 violence was choreographed to cause damage to the PTI. The case, however, can be solved within an hour,” Imran said.

He further said that first of all there was a need to ascertain who had ordered his arrest on May 9. “Ever since May 9, we have been demanding a judicial inquiry into the incidents that took place on that day,” PTI founder said, adding but sadly the ‘establishment’ did not want this to happen.  

The fourth conspiracy, Imran said, was when the mandate the people had given to the PTI in the February 8 general elections was stolen from it.

“At the moment there is only one-way traffic in the country,” the former prime minister said, adding all this had been done to give an extension to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Qazi Faez Isa. “Now the same CJP has deprived the PTI of three seats in assemblies.”

Imran said he was surprised how his wife Bushra Bibi was nominated in a May 9-related case when most of the time she stayed at home. “I want to tell the establishment that it, in order to crush the PTI, is bent upon destroying the country. The truth of the matter is that it is the country, not the PTI, which you are destroying.”

He wondered how people would invest in the country when the government did not comply with the court’s verdicts. “Loan borrowing will lead to more inflation in the country,” he said.

He dispelled the impression that he was unnerved after Faiz’s arrest. “Had I been afraid, I would not have demanded the formation of a judicial commission on the matter.”

PTI founder said that social media was the people’s voice.

He said he could send articles to different publications through his lawyers and he did not need any jail staffer for that.

The former prime minister said jammers had been installed in the jail. “My cellphone does not catch signals. This is all witch-hunt. These people are frightened.”

Imran said he was ready to meet the party leader Sher Afzal Marwat. “My lawyers were asked not to discuss politics with me. Should I discuss the weather with them?”

Responding to a question about Nawaz Sharif’s remarks that the PTI government had destroyed the country’s economy, he said, “Just read the Economic Survey of Pakistan. And you will be able to know which government’s policies led to the current state of the economy.”

He asked PTI leaders from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Atif Khan and Junaid Khan to meet members of the committee formed to probe graft allegations.

Reporter: Irshad Qureshi