ISLAMABAD, May 16: Former director general of ISI Lt-Gen (retd) Asad Durrani spilled the beans on Wednesday when he claimed before the Supreme Court that his then boss, the army chief, Gen (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, was on board from the very beginning in the plan to disburse donations among politicians in the 1990s.

A day ahead of hearing of the Asghar Khan case, Mr Durrani said in a concise statement that Gen Beg was associated with the process of issuing instructions and also with overseeing the operation of disbursement of the funds.

A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry will resume hearing on Thursday of the 1996 petition of Tehriq-i-Istiqlal’s chief Asghar Khan about allegations of ISI’s financing of politicians in the 1990 election to prevent the victory of the Pakistan People’s Party.

Mr Durrani filed his statement in response to Gen (retd) Beg’s affidavit passing the buck to him and saying that he had the knowledge about the accounts.

Mr Durrani said he had received initial orders to organise distribution of election donations through Gen (retd) Beg, although subsequent instructions were at times conveyed by Ijlal Haider Zaidi, a member of then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan’s election team.

“I kept the army chief fully informed,” Mr Durrani claimed and recalled that according to Gen Beg’s affidavit of Feb 23, 1997, the ISI did have a political cell created by the late prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The ISI, he said, was an organisation that responded to multiple centres of power: the president as the supreme commander of the armed forces, the three service chiefs and the chairman of the Joint Services Headquarters and the prime minister.

In practice, however, the army chief wielded more power over the ISI than any of its other “bosses” not he only because of his extraordinary status in the national polity but also because most of ISI’s senior appointments, including its director general, were serving soldiers, he said.

Mr Durrani said all accounts of the funds doled out were maintained by officers of different Military Intelligence detachments and the amount had been placed in temporary accounts (details, he said, could be provided confidentially).

After the disbursements were over, the balance was transferred to a special fund of the ISI and records were since meticulously maintained, all transactions could be accounted for, the statement said.

Mr Durrani recalled that the petitioner in his Jan 30, 1999, letter to then chief justice Saiduzzaman Siddiqui had acknowledges that “the charter of the ISI makes it clear that it can be used by the chief executive of the country to finance political parties”.

The former chief justice in his June 16, 1997, order referred to documents placed before him by the then attorney general and said: “It appears that a political cell was created in the ISI in May 1975, which is still in existence.”

Mr Durrani argued that the decision to disburse election donations through the ISI might well have been taken by president Ishaq Khan who, having handpicked the caretaker government, including prime minister Mustafa Jatoi, was the de facto chief executive.

The operation was, therefore, lawful and followed an established chain of command, he contended.

He said he believed that as an army general he had to take responsibility for his action.

“In this case I followed orders, being convinced that it was in the country’s best interest.”

In the end, he said he was ready to explain his decisions or submit a paper on the subject on a confidential basis.