Sarina Isa expresses concern about husband's safety in letter to President Alvi

ISLAMABAD: Sarina Isa, wife of Supreme Court judge Qazi Faez Isa, expressed concerns about her husband's safety in a letter addressed to President Dr Arif Alvi,The News reported.

Sarina has written to President Alvi two weeks after the country’s apex court in its detailed order stated that "the scale and degree of the illegalities are such that the [presidential] reference [against Justice Isa] is deemed to be tainted with mala fide in law. For this reason, the reference is hereby quashed.”

In the letter, Sarina raised questions on the conduct of former chief justice Asif Saeed Khosa and retired top court judge Azmat Saeed – who once heard presidential reference against her husband.

She said Khosa had shown the presidential reference to Justice Isa before placing it before the Supreme Judicial Council. “My husband told Justice Khosa that properties were not his and he had no concern with them. ‘How then is the reference maintainable,’ observed Justice Khosa. But then something changed,” she wrote.

"Justice Khosa decided to convene the SJC meeting behind my husband’s back and repeatedly sent for Attorney-General Anwar Mansoor Khan who after the reference was filed wrote on June 1, 2019, to PTI’s Mirza Shahzad Akbar to provide him her tax returns otherwise it may result into an adverse order; the attorney-general and the worker of a political party joined hands.”

She said Justice Khosa obliged by asking for the money trail and source of funds for the purchase of the properties.

But former chief justice Khosa did not respond to Sarina’s claim when this correspondent approached him to know his side of the story. "It may not be appropriate for me to comment on anything statedly contained in a letter written by one person to another," former CJP Khosa said.

“Justice (retd) Saeed also heard another reference against my husband just six working days before his retirement confident that it would be concluded before he retired; and concluded did he append his signature to Justice Khosa’s rebuke and chastisement of my husband, without my husband’s peers hearing him even once.”

The retired judge did not respond to this correspondent's queries till the filing of this story.

Sarina said it was the government’s primary duty to keep people safe but noted “complicity at the highest level”. Sarina said the couple did not have armed escorts, adding that their safety is with “Almighty Allah, however, those who have done all this, those who have acted through proxies and in stealth should know that if we are harmed, their names will be sent to FATF, Interpol and the United Nations”.

Sarina said it was a shame that a country that has seen its women, children, lawyers, doctors, teachers and many others being butchered is on the FATF grey list, observing that the recommendations made in the Quetta Commission Report are yet to be implemented.

Sarina informed the president of threats received by her husband from a Rawalpindi cleric and lamented that the blatant public advocacy of terrorism did not “capture immediate attention of the highest in the land”.

“PTA and PEMRA block websites, censor media and tweeters are kidnapped in broad daylight when their tweets are considered to be unpalatable, recordings of the Capital Safe City Project too disappear,” she wrote.

Sarina said she was sent eight notices but was not given a hearing. “Even he [Zulfikar Ahmed] had to acknowledge that I had foreign currency accounts with the standard Chartered Bank Clifton Branch Karachi from where I had sent to quote him, "737503 British Pounds and 17, 966 US dollars" the cumulative purchase price of the properties was 751, 000 Pounds, there the money trail matter introduced by Justice Khosa stood settled.”

“I also showed my earning and savings and thus Justice Khosa's nitpicked source of funds too was taken care of.”

"But not every government servant can withstand pressure so he created an artificial liability, which I have challenged in appeal. With my appeal I filed an application seeking the tax records of those who had illegally accessed my tax record," the letter stated.