Army finds it cannot hold trial of Gen Beg, Durrani
 

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Army’s legal branch, in its preliminary report presented to COAS General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani, finds hardly any scope for the military to try Gen (retd) Aslam Beg and Lt Gen (retd) Asad Durrani under the Army Act, it has been learnt.
Informed sources said that General Kayani has asked the Judge Advocate General Branch (JAG) in the General Headquarters to further study the case by engaging some top lawyers to assess if the Army Act applies on the kind of acts in which the former army chief and ISI chief were found to have been involved by the apex court.
These sources said that after top-level civil-military discussions over the possibilities of initiating criminal proceedings against Beg and Durrani, the GHQ has already started studying the legal aspects of the Army Act to finally conclude if the two would be tried by the military or civilian government.
The government has not yet formally referred the case to the army, whose legal branch is presently studying the relevance of the Army Act. It is said that the civilian government might find much in the prevailing statutes to deal with these cases without referring it to the army.
Counsel for Asghar Khan in the case, Salman Akram Raja, has repeatedly demanded of the federal government to initiate criminal proceedings under Article 6 of the Constitution against the two retired generals, which is purely the domain of the interior ministry.
The SC has also directed the FIA, which comes under the interior ministry, to investigate the matter in the light of the apex court’s order.
According to the military source, under the Army Act’s Section 92(2), no such person shall be tried for an offence unless his trial commences within six months after he had ceased to the subject to the Act.
The same section, it is said, includes a provision envisaging that the period of six months would not be deemed to have expired if the offence relates to desertion, fraudulent enrolment or the offences specified in Section 31 or Section 40 of the Army Act.
The Section 31 of the Army Act pertains to mutiny and insubordination, which has no relevance to the case of Beg and Durrani, who had retired almost two decades back and had neither deserted nor were fraudulently enrolled in the army.
The Section 40 pertains to the fraudulent offence in respect of property including dishonest misappropriation or theft or criminal breach in relation to any government property; dishonest receipt or retention of stolen property; or have caused wrongful gain or wrongful loss to any person.
In the case of Beg and Durrani, it is said that the two followed unlawful orders of the then president and for the same reason have been condemned but the whole episode does not involve public money or loss of public property.
Owing to these facts, the military sources argue that the preliminary report of the JAG branch did not see any scope for the application of the Army Act in this case.
These sources explained that in the NLC case, the Army Act came into play for the main reason that the scam involved alleged loss to public money.
As per Durrani’s affidavit, the sources said, the money involved belonged to the business community and there has been no grievance on part of any businessman for wrongful loss of his money.
Durrani, in his affidavit, said: “In September 1990, as DG ISI, I received instructions from the then COAS, (now retired) General Mirza Aslam Beg to provide logistic support to the disbursement of donations made by some businessmen of Karachi to the election campaign of IJI. I was told that the operation had the blessings of the government.”


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