I am not a lawyer, and thus do not know if a confessional statement under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code can be resiled from or not. However I was in NAB at the time Ishaq Dar was interrogated, and I know that his confessional statement was entirely voluntary.
Col Obaidullah of NAB, probably our most gifted interrogator, interrogated both Ishaq Dar and Khawaja Asif. About Dar, I remember Obaid asking my opinion on how Dar ought to be treated, since he was continually putting forward claims of fragile health, which is the first defense of anyone under serious interrogation. I told him that he must make his own judgement in the matter and inform Gen Amjad [ Chairman NAB] accordingly.
Some weeks later Obaid had another talk with me. He said that Dar had made a full and complete confession which was entirely voluntary, without being subjected to any manner of coercion, and that beyond what he had confessed to, there really was no evidence against him. He also informed me that he had not found any evidence against Khawaja Asif either. He asked me for my advice on how I thought he should proceed further with these two cases.
I told him that he must convey his honest determination to Gen Amjad.
And this is what happened. Both Dar and Khawaja Asif were released from NAB custody. Dar was released in his capacity of having turned approver for the State. In Khawaja Asif’s case Gen Amjad went so far as to proffer his apologies to him for his arrest by NAB.
At that time Gen Inayatullah Niazi was Deputy Chairman NAB. He was extremely upset with Col Obaid for his recommendations which freed these two politicians. The language and tone Gen Niazi used with Obaid was so full of unrestrained virulence and invective, that it triggered a heart attack in Obaid. We rushed him to CMH but 8 hours later he was dead.
The next day Gen Amjad took steps to have Gen Niazi removed from NAB.
The point of this note is that Ishaq Dar was treated within the bounds of decency while under the custody of NAB, and he was only too willing to give the confession that he gave. To claim now that this confession was given by him under duress is one of the lesser lies being put out by a member of this government.
Indeed, so beholden was Ishaq Dar for the decency and kindness with which Col Obaid had treated him, that many years later when Samiullah [Obaid’s son] had come of age and was in search of a job, it was Dar who fixed him up in a bank.
Victims of coercion and mistreatment do not treat their oppressors in this manner.
P.S Most lawyers agree that Ishaq Dar’s confession left no loophole, and as complete as it was damning. It was despite this confession that Qazi Faez Isa obstructed further process of the case against Ishaq Dar after Qamar Zaman Chaudhary [ the then Chairman NAB] had already done his best to have an appeal in this case made time barred.
I have never doubted that both Qazi Isa and Qamar Zaman were bought by the Sharif family. And so I do not doubt that Qazi Faez Isa’s London property was the fruit of illegal gratification. Legally he had merely waltzed around this issue because he has still to provide valid proof of means from which he bought this property and the money trail leading up to the transaction.