The Pakistan Supreme Court has clarified that the memo commission has not declared Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani a traitor.
The court also said that Haqqani was neither an accused nor a trial was being conducted, as the court would decide in that regard after hearing all the parties, reports the Daily Times.
Haqqani had said the media had painted him "variously as a ''traitor'', ''Pakistan''s Benedict Arnold'', and ''disloyal to the Pakistani state''", insisting that these were extreme characterisations by people who disagreed with him politically.
Haqqani's counsel Asma Jahangir requested the court to review its order of summoning Haqqani in the given circumstances, saying the situation in the country was not in her client's favour and he faced many threats. She said Haqqani''s life was in "grave danger".z
During the hearing, Jahangir also read out a letter by Haqqani in which said he would not come back to Pakistan due to security reasons.
"I will not risk my life until the circumstances that have put my life in jeopardy have changed," his letter stated, adding, "Given the current mood and environment in the country, where individuals are being burnt alive on unproved charges of blasphemy, and ethnic, political and sectarian killings are going unnoticed, it is unreasonable to pressure me to return to the country to respond to political accusations based on the word of a foreigner."
"I have neither been charged or tried nor convicted of any crime under the laws of Pakistan and yet I have been painted as a criminal in the eyes of the general public," it further said.
Jahangir said the government was not providing security to Haqqani, adding that they had contacted the attorney general of Pakistan for that purpose but nobody had responded.
The court, granting Haqqani's counsel three days to file the exemption application, adjourned the hearing for indefinite period.
