Daily Times

History has a knack for hanging on to strange events. Talking exclusively to Daily Times, former human rights minister and PTI stalwart Shireen Mazari on Wednesday spilt the beans over the so-called confessional statement of her party member Shehbaz Gill as a “page out of the old playbook.”

Just like a fabricated, nuanced disclosure by the chief of the Federal Security Force, Masood Mahmood, was pursued as an approver in the controversial Zulfikar Ali Bhutto assassination case after Zia ul Haq’s takeover, the government of today was unleashing the full brunt of its torture upon Shehbaz Gill in a desperate attempt to get a shred of an anti-Imran statement, she bemoaned.Mazari, however, warned the authorities that “time had changed and the environment altered with a robust media and social media.” She also reminded me how Pakistan was “a signatory to Convention against Torture” and, therefore, had an international commitment to uphold as well as its own constitution to abide by.

Back in 1977, Masood Mahmood had given a confessional statement days after his arrest, which played a vital role in the “judicial murder” of the first elected prime minister of Pakistan.

Separately, in a series of tweets on Wednesday, Mazari lashed out at the PML-N-led federal government for what she termed as the victimization of Mr Gill. “Shameful how Gill is being victimised & tortured without any legal case proven against him.”

“A man with serious heart issues & look at shameless ICT police surrounding him as he lies barely conscious on a stretcher! They may murder him & others just to get a false statement on IK,” she posted on her Twitter handle. “After all look at the brutality done on 25 May & remember Rana Sana’s Model Town massacre. This is an Imported govt of crooks and hoodlums,” she further wrote.

“The regime change conspirators are getting desperate to try & get something against IK & now using Shahbaz Gill by torturing him to force false statements, which he has so far resisted despite extreme torture first when he was abducted to unknown location & then at CIA cell,” Mazari maintained in another tweet. “The re-sending of Gill on police remand is something that is very rare after judicial remand has been granted. Pak’s descent into fascism is happening at a furious pace but we will resist to the full.” The party chairperson Imran Khan also took to Twitter to share his concerns about his chief of staff being sent into police remand once again. “He is in a fragile state of mental & physical health because of the torture inflicted on him when he was abducted & taken to undisclosed location & then again at the police station,” the tweet further read. Calling his arrest a conspiracy to target him and his party, the former prime minister criticised the attempt to “forcibly get false statements against us similar to what they have been doing against social media activists.””Unacceptable,” he thundered, voicing his resolve to “take all legal & pol actions to counter not only this torture being inflicted upon Shahbaz Gill but also any such extra-Constitutional & extra-legal actions being devised against us.