Pakistan | Imran removed Munir as ISI chief after raising issue of wife’s corruption: Sharif

Islamabad. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Monday that his predecessor Imran Khan had removed current army chief General Asim Munir from the post of ISI chief in 2019 after the intelligence chief presented evidence of corruption linked to his wife. Munir was the chief of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s intelligence agency. In 2019, the then Prime Minister Khan replaced Munir with Lt Gen Faiz Hameed as ISI chief. Addressing the National Assembly on Monday, Prime Minister Sharif said, “I say this with full responsibility that the current Army Chief (Munir) when he was the DG (Director General) ISI, told the then Prime Minister (Khan) that his Wife Bushra Bibi is involved in corruption. He said this on the basis of facts. The Prime Minister said, “But apparently Khan was incensed by this and he did not like it. And the rest is history.” Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, in a recent tweet rejected a report in UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph which claimed that Munir was fired by Khan due to personal differences. was removed from office. The news claimed that Khan removed Munir in June 2019, eight months after his appointment, because he wanted to investigate his wife and people close to him for corruption. Khan tweeted, “It is claimed in the news that I forced General Asim to resign from the post of DG ISI because he raised corruption cases of my wife Bushra Begum. This is completely false. Neither General Asim showed me any evidence of my wife’s corruption, nor did I ask for his resignation because of this. Also read On May 9, Khan (70) was arrested by the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers in a corruption case while he was in the Islamabad High Court premises. After this, demonstrations started across the country. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, protesters stormed the army headquarters in Rawalpindi and set fire to a corps commander’s house in Lahore. Police put the death toll in the violent clashes at 10, while Khan’s party claimed that 40 of its workers were killed in firing by security personnel. Pakistan’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, passed a resolution on Monday, pledging to prosecute miscreants involved in the May 9 attacks on military and power establishments under existing laws, including the Army Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act. (agency)