The Pakistan Supreme Court on Wednesday interrogated Prime Minister Imran Khan during the hearing relating to the 2014 terror attack on a school, which was carried out by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), from whom Imran Khan has recently lifted the ban. ‘You are in power. The government is also yours. What have you done? You brought those guilty to the negotiation table,’ Pakistan’s Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed said.
TTP militants stormed the APS-Warsak School in Peshawar in 2014, killing 147 people, 132 of them children. The apex court summoned Imran Khan for a hearing on Wednesday. ‘Are we going to surrender once again?’ Justice Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmed asked the premier as he appeared before the bench. According to Imran Khan, the 2014 attack was very painful and his party was in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at the time. Imran Khan said, ‘Find out why 80,000 people were killed and who is responsible for 480 drone attacks occurring in Pakistan’.
In reply, the chief justice said, ‘Finding out about these things is your job, you are the prime minister. As the prime minister, you should have the answer to these questions. You are the prime minister, you should have answers. Mr Prime Minister, we are not a small country. We have the sixth largest army in the world,’ said Justice Amin. The attorney general acknowledged the mistakes on behalf of the government. ‘FIR could not be registered against higher-ups,’ the attorney general said.
‘Where do the intelligence [agencies] disappear when it comes to the protection of their own citizens? Was a case registered against the former army chief and others responsible?’ the chief justice asked. According to the attorney general, the inquiry report did not uncover anything relevant to the former army chief and former director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence. ‘There is such a huge intelligence system in the country. Billions of rupees are spent on it. There is also a claim that we are the best intelligence agency in the world. So much is being spent on intelligence but the results are zero,’ the chief justice said.
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‘We could have simply said the PML-N was in power at that time and accused then-PM Nawaz Sharif and the former interior minister of failure. But we realise this war is beyond individuals,’ information minister Fawad Chaudhry said later outside the court. The government is in talks with the TTP on a ‘reconciliation process’ and Chaudhry announced on Monday that a ‘complete ceasefire’ had been reached with the banned outfit.
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