Imtiaz Ahmed

Biography

Imtiaz Ahmed was born into a Kashmiri family in Gujranwala, Punjab in British India on 4 June 1935, according to the Indian author, P.C. Joshi. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in civil engineering, and earned a commission as a Second lieutenant (2nd-Lt.) in the Pakistan Army Corps of Engineers in 1960.

In the late 1970s, he joined the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as a security analyst and remained associated with Pakistan's intelligence community for many years. In 1979, as a Major, Ahmed was posted on a security assignment to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), involved in running background checks and providing covert security to the technicians working on the power plant. In 1979, he became aware of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 'mole' working as an engineer, who was trying to seek security details on the commercial nuclear power plant for sabotage purposes.

The details and veracity of this assignment has been criticized in an editorial written in Dawn, whose investigations identified the engineer who was working for the Karachi Electric (KE) electric power transmission, and who had been a prominent member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, not working for the KANUPP nuclear power plant as claimed by Ahmed. In 1992, he aided in launching of the Operation Clean-up armed operation to cleanse Karachi of "anti-social" elements, and ultimately targeting the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) once the Jinnahpur conspiracy to partition Karachi from Sindh was unearthed.

After the resignations of Prime Minister Sharif and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Ahmed resigned from the directorship of the Intelligence Bureau. He termed his resignation as "on principle" on 19 April 1992.

In 1997, Ahmed was appointed by Prime Minister Sharif as Director-General of the Federal Investigation Agency but the appointment did not come through. In a Supreme Court bench headed by then-Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who heard the NRO implementation case, Ahmed was arrested from the court by order of the Supreme Court during the hearing of a case relating to the implementation of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). His release was given on grounds of his age and medical condition, as he reportedly suffered from coronary artery disease.

Secrecy: policy and secrets

In 1980, Lieutenant-Colonel (Lt-Col.) Ahmed joined the Joint Counterintelligence Bureau (JCIB), mainly working in counterintelligence management and overseeing anti-communist operations in Sindh.

In 1981, he began investigating the militant Al-Zulfiqar group, after the 1981 Pakistan International Airlines hijacking, eventually expanding their spying on the leaders of the MRD led by Benazir Bhutto in 1982–85.

From 1983 to 1988, he also monitored the anti-communist judicial probe that implicated the journalists Jam Saqi and Sohail Sangi, and harboured doubts of foreign funding of the MRD alliance led by Benazir Bhutto. Over this judicial probe, the Communist Party of Pakistan politicians leveled accusations of Ahmed's CI Bureau in Sindh of wrongfully

In 1988, Brig. Ahmed was appointed director of the Political Wing of the ISI in Islamabad, managing the country's internal security and tried uniting the Pakistan National Alliance conservative mass against the left-oriented Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Due to the complaints of Naseerullah Babar, Security Adviser at the Interior Ministry, Brig. Ahmad was rotated back to the Corps of Engineers on a construction engineering assignment in Risalpur, but his skills of intelligence management and extraction was valuable, so he eventually found a way to secretly serve in the Intelligence Bureau.

In 1989, Brig. Imtiaz, in a secret conversation with Major Amir Khan, talked on sponsoring the Members of Parliament (MPs) belonging to the PPP to bring about a vote of no-confidence movement to remove Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in order to bring the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML(N)), led by its then-President Fida Mohammad Khan and his chief secretary Nawaz Sharif, into the administration. The plan backfired when the conversation was apparently videotaped by the IB and ISI, and was released to the public, which eventually led to General Mirza Aslam Beg, then-Army Chief, to allow Military Intelligence (MI) to conduct the inquiry in such manner.

After his discharge in 1989, Ahmed was reportedly employed by then-Chief Minister of Punjab, Nawaz Sharif, as his Additional Chief Secretary in the Government of Punjab, which he served as until 1990. In 1992, he aided in launching of the Operation Clean-up armed operation to cleanse Karachi of "anti-social" elements, and ultimately targeting the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) once the Jinnahpur conspiracy to partition Karachi from Sindh was unearthed.

After the resignations of Prime Minister Sharif and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Ahmed resigned from the directorship of the Intelligence Bureau. He termed his resignation as "on principle" on 19 April 1992.

In 1997, Ahmed was appointed by Prime Minister Sharif as Director-General of the Federal Investigation Agency but the appointment did not come through. In a Supreme Court bench headed by then-Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who heard the NRO implementation case, Ahmed was arrested from the court by order of the Supreme Court during the hearing of a case relating to the implementation of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). His release was given on grounds of his age and medical condition, as he reportedly suffered from coronary artery disease. The case against him was marked on the political motives, and he was later released due to lack of evidences.

After the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état by General Pervez Musharraf, the inquiries led by NAB indicted Ahmed on large-scale corruption and misappropriation of funds while serving as the Director of IB, eventually finding him guilty in 2001. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for corruption, and was released in 2008–09. In a Supreme Court bench headed by then-Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who heard the NRO implementation case, Ahmed was arrested from the court by order of the Supreme Court during the hearing of a case relating to the implementation of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). His release was given on grounds of his age and medical condition, as he reportedly suffered from coronary artery disease.

Jinnahpur plan controversy

After his release in 2009, Ahmed became an intelligence commentator and gave several television interviews on intelligence management. He revealed that the Jinnahpur conspiracy was fabricated while giving more information on the Operation Midnight Jackal secret funding of political parties against the PPP.