LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Friday took on a premier civilian spy agency for what it said “targeting it at the behest of Prime Minister Imran Khan”, warning its officials against toeing the agenda of the PTI government against the opposition.

“We will not let the Intelligence Bureau (IB) become the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The IB is harassing the opponents of the government. It is spying on them (opposition leaders) and instrumental in making false cases against them,” PML-N Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal alleged at a presser at Model Town here on Friday.

Mr Iqbal reminded the IB that it was the PML-N government that had built its (IB’s) capacity to deal with terrorism and enemies of the country. “Its capacity had not been built to harass the opponents of the incumbent government. It is the duty of the officers and officials of the IB not to pursue the political agenda of the PTI government as they are not bound by the Constitution to accept any such unlawful orders,” he said.

Ahsan reminds the institution that his govt built its capacity

The former interior minister further said the IB was an important security institution and it should not let its professionalism be affected. “We expect that IB’s officials will act professionally,” he said and added that the PTI government had been destroying the state institutions one by one.

Earlier, PML-N vice-president Maryam Nawaz had named the IB in the episode of Daska election last month in which 20 polling staff officials of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) were allegedly abducted for several hours. Subsequently, the ECP annulled the election and a case was pending with the apex court.

In the PML-N’s previous regime the gulf between the IB and the Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s premier spy agency, had widened because of tension between then premier Nawaz Sharif and the Establishment.

IB’s former director general Aftab Sultan who served during the last PML-N tenure, said Nawaz Sharif had helped a lot in developing its capacity to combat terrorism. “The prime minister supported us a lot that is why today the IB is an important pillar combating terrorism in the country,” Mr Sultan had told Dawn.

“Since the IB directly comes under the prime minister, it is supposed to take orders from him and execute them,” an official source told Dawn on Friday.

Referring to the army chief’s statement that Pakistan needs to put its house in order first, Ahsan Iqbal said when former premier Nawaz Sharif talked about this in 2016 the ‘newsleak’ scandal was made. “If action had been taken in this direction the country would not have faced FATF issue today,” he said and demanded rectification of the past mistakes and a step towards betterment of the country in the form of holding fresh free and fair polls.

Mr Iqbal also said the government was going to bring a law under which the State Bank governor and its officials would not be questioned by NAB or FIA for bringing in ‘hot money’ under the IMF deal. “Imran Khan has compromised the financial security of the country.”

The PML-N leader also said the PTI was a ‘social media party’ which is good at making trends online but incapable of running the country. “ (Prime Minister) Imran Khan in 22 years of his politics had only trained his fan club to hurl abuses at his opponents. He has consistently been lying and misleading the people since he has come to power. He is a complete failure on every front,” Mr Iqbal said and chided the premier for taking credit for setting up PML-N’s project Malakand University.

IB Director General Dr Suleman Khan was not available for comment.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2021