Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: A day after serious allegations were levelled against Owais Muzaffar, a new ‘confessional’ video has surfaced showing former Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) federal minister Dr Asim Hussain making revelations about the business and financial affairs of former president Asif Ali Zardari.

In the video, shot at the same location as the earlier one, Hussain appears to be naming Zardari’s close aides who look after his financial interests to maintain his political clout.

The video shows the former federal minister, who is facing charges of corruption and terror financing, saying that Nawabshah resident Shah Nawaz Junejo takes care of “illegal matters “ in interior Sindh on behalf of the former president of Pakistan and incumbent co-chairman of the PPP. “I think there is a man named Shah Nawaz Junejo who is Zardari’s henchman. He looks after matters in interior Sindh…illegal matters in Sindh,” Hussain says in the video.

He said that former Senate chairman and senior lawyer Farooq Naek looked after Zardari’s financial interests in Switzerland, Dr Ghani Ansari and banker Ghaffoor in Dubai and a female secretary, whose name he could not recall, was overseeing his financial affairs in the United States.

Hussain said that a man named Hassan Ali was dealing with matters related to land in interior Sindh on behalf of Zardari.

Hussain’s lawyer Anwar Mansoor Khan expressed his surprise at the release of a video clip of his client on the electronic media, calling it a malicious attempt to influence the courts and the judges in particular and the masses in general.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Khan said that he would request the court to stop such activities forthwith. In his statement, Hussain’s counsel said last night there was a clip aired by the electronic media in which his client was shown giving a statement against a third person. He said the clip belonged to the period when Hussain was taken into custody by the Rangers, tortured and forced to record statements of their choice. He said that Hussain was not allowed to see his lawyers at that time. He said that according to the law statements recorded under duress without the presence of any magistrate, in solitary confinement and under the influence of drugs had no legal sanctity. “We were expecting such illegal moves,” he added.

Through the applications, Dr Ejaz Fatima had requested the Sindh High Court to declare that neither the Rangers nor any other respondent could make Hussain incriminate himself under pressure or extract information from him through any means of torture. The court was requested to declare that any statement recorded in custody was inadmissible as evidence.

Khan said the Rangers was exposed in this case when they submitted false hospital bills and now they were involving a third person by releasing such exaggerated clips. He said that Hussain had never been in a position to investigate against any person in the government. He said this was a totally false statement attributed to his client, just to damage the case.

It has already been reported in the media that Hussain was brought to the hospital by the Rangers where doctors declared him a heart patient, but the Rangers took him away forcefully as well as the hospital record to hide their crime of influencing him through drugs, said his counsel. He stated that he had discussed the matter with Hussain and he told him that he was not aware of any such statement and would never own them. He said that Hussain was forced in detention to sign various documents.