After the Judicial Commission probing the Memogate controversy in Pakistan granted his request, Chairman Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Yasin Malik deposed before it in Islamabad to clarify Mansoor Ijaz’s statements regarding him.
The Pakistani American businessman Ijaz had said that he had arranged a meeting between Malik and the chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external spy agency. The JKLF chief had requested the Supreme Court of Pakistan on March 17 that he should be allowed to become a party before the commission. The Commission subsequently granted his request.
On the other hand, Mansoor Ijaz, the whistleblower of the Memogate scandal claimed that Malik cannot deny the help that was provided to him and the Kashmiri people over a decade ago to achieve the structural ceasefire that enabled the then President General Pervez Musharraf and former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to find a nearly permanent accord over Kashmir at the 2011 Agra summit.
Ijaz termed Malik’s statement before Memogate commission a flat denial of the facts and a “prosecutable lie”. He said that Malik’s meeting with the then deputy director of RAW, Chander D Sahay was a key turning point in bringing a permanent ceasefire in Kashmir.
Recalling the events which led to his meeting with Ijaz during a seminar in November 2000, Malik said that Ijaz had invited him for a lunch during which an Indian man showed up. He said that Ijaz had introduced him as a businessman but he left the meeting with the suspicion that the man was the RAW chief.
Ijaz in a statement issued via email said that Malik had made many sacrifices for the Kashmir cause and it was because of this he had helped him achieve a “structural ceasefire with Indian security forces that brought peace to the Kashmir valley for an extended period.” Responding to a question, Malik said that JKLF is a responsible party and some forces want to defame it. Ijaz said that Malik is unnecessary allowing himself to be dragged into the Memogate affair by those who are trying to cover up the truth.
Ijaz has also called on Malik to retract his statement and adds that he has email records, telephone and hotel bills and other evidence of their meeting and the people present during them.
Earlier during cross-examination before the commission, Ijaz had stated that Malik, at the insistence of the US government, had met then chief of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
