After ex-ISI chief Faiz Hameed, Pakistan arrests 3 more senior retired army officers

After the unprecedented arrest of former Pakistani spy chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, three more former senior army officers have been arrested.

The Pakistani military on Monday said that Hameed, the former chief of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had been arrested. He faces a court-martial on charges of corruption and misuse of power.

Hameed is the first chief of ISI, the powerful spy agency of Pakistan, to face a court-martial. In Pakistan where the military has ruled for nearly half of its existence, the ISI chief is considered to be the second-most powerful person in the country after the army chief.

The fresh arrests of three other officers have come for “actions prejudicial to military discipline”, said the military in a statement carried by Reuters.

The statement added that the military continued to investigate some retired officers and their accomplices for “fomenting instability at the behest of, and in collusion with, vested political interests”, as per the news agency.

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While the statement did not name the arrested officers, The Express Tribune has identified two of the three arrested officers as former Brigadiers Ghaffar and Naeem.

The newspaper reported that both the retired brigadiers were allegedly involved in a covert operation to aid political liaisons. They were also close associated of Hameed and hailed from Pakistani Punjab’s Chakwal city.

Even though Hameed has been said to be arrested in connection with a case of pressurising a builder by misusing his position, his arrest has been seen as part of Pakistan’s political churn. Hameed was deemed close to former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was unceremoniously ousted in 2022 in a trust vote. Accused in more than 100 cases, he has been in jail for more than a year after making an enemy out of the all-powerful military-intelligence establishment.

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Hamid was deemed so close to Imran that his transfer out of the ISI by the then-army chief Genera Qamar Javed Bajwa was said to have led to a rift between him and Khan. The rift is said to have contributed to Imran making an enemy out of the army. Since his ouster, Imran has alleged that the army, the then-Opposition parties, and the United States were part of a conspiracy to remove him from power.

Formally, the case against Hameed involves allegations of misconduct levelled by the owner of a private housing society, Ka­n­­war Moeez Khan of Islamabad’s Top City, according to Dawn.

The newspaper reported that Khan has accused Hameed of raiding his offices and taking away valuables, including around 400 tola gold, cash, and diamonds. He also accused Hameed of the illegal takeover of the housing society.