Imran urges President Alvi to 'act now, draw clear operational lines for ISPR'

Former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan called on President Arif Alvi to act against the “abuse of power and violations of our laws and of the Constitution", Aaj News reported.

In a letter dated November 6, Imran appealed to the president, a founding member of PTI, to take note of “serious wrongdoings” undermining Pakistan's national security. The PTI chairman also asked the president to identify the “guilty” and hold them accountable.

Imran claimed that Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah had repeatedly issued death threats against him, and said a conspiracy was hatched to assassinate him was hatched by Sanaullah, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a senior military official, something he has claimed in his speeches as well.

While talking about the cypher, which he has previously said is proof of foreign involvement in his ouster as PM, Imran said that a National Security Committee (NSC) meeting held during his tenure had “decided this was an unacceptable intrusion into our internal matters.

However, Imran wrote, a recent joint press conference of the DG ISI and DG ISPR saw the former "contradicting the decision made by the NSC under two governments and stating that the message of the US government conveyed by our envoy in Washington DC in the cypher was not an unacceptable intrusion into our internal affairs but simply a case of ‘misconduct’."

He added that "the parameters of a military information organisation such as the ISPR also need to be clearly defined and limited to information relating to defence and military issues."

"As supreme commander of the armed forces, I call on you to initiate the drawing up of these clear operational lines for the ISPR," he said to the president," Imran wrote.

He also said that a “confidential conversation between myself as prime minister, the Chief of Army Staff and the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), on a supposedly secure line, was ‘leaked’ to the media”.

In a first, DG ISI addresses media, confronts Imran Khan's narrative

This is a breach of national security at the highest level,” Imran said.

"We have been seeing a massive abuse of citizens at the hands of rogue elements within state organisations, including custodial torture and abductions all carried out with impunity," Imran wrote.

He requested the president to act now to stop the abuse of power and "violations of our laws and of the Constitution, which ensures the fundamental rights of every citizen”.