Mansoor Ijaz issued visa to visit Pakistan

Controversial Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, who is at the centre of the memo scandal, has got a visa to visit Pakistan to appear before a judicial commission.

Pakistan's High Commissioner to the UK Wajid Shamsul Hasan said last evening that Ijaz contacted the mission from the airport, saying that he wanted to come to the High Commission.

Pakistan mission sources said Ijaz, who has been asked to appear in Pakistan before a judicial panel probing the memo scandal on January 24, was given the visa yesterday.
Ijaz has also been asked to appear before a parliamentary panel probing the memo scandal on January 26.

Ijaz had said he planned to fly to Pakistan to depose before courts what he claimed as "unaltered truth".

The controversial allegations made by Ijaz reach all the way up to President Asif Zardari, and could result in the bringing of treason charges against the country's former ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani or even the president himself.

Earlier Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in Islamabad, that Ijaz has contacted the Pakistan's mission in Switzerland by email for obtaining a visa to depose before a judicial panel probing the memo scandal.

"I have been informed by Pakistan's Ambassador in Switzerland that Mansoor Ijaz has approached (the embassy) and he was supposed to come on Monday for the visa but he did not turn up until Thursday," Malik had said.

Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit had said yesterday in Islamabad that they have not received a visa application from Ijaz,the main accuser in the memo scandal, in any country.