The former chief of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has been detained by the military and charged in connection with a raid on a private housing development.
Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, who took early retirement in 2022, will face court martial proceedings.
It is rare for a senior officer to be charged in Pakistan, a country where the army is highly influential and has mounted numerous coups to remove elected governments over the years.
“Consequently, appropriate disciplinary action has been initiated against Lt Gen Faiz Hameed (Retd), under provisions of the Pakistan Army Act,” it added.
Hameed’s arrest is a major fall from grace for an officer who, up until November 2022, was considered for the post of chief of army staff in succession to Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Hameed was director general of the ISI from 2019 to 2021, and was filmed drinking tea in the lobby of a hotel in Kabul shortly after the city fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
In the past, the ISI has maintained relations with elements of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In 2011, the Obama administration deliberately kept Pakistan in the dark when it assassinated Osama bin Laden because it feared the operation would be compromised.
Hameed was arrested as the Pakistan Army and Taliban forces traded fire across the Afghan border near Torkham.Officials said a woman and two children were killed on the Afghan side of the border during the clash.
Torkham, a key border crossing, is in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northeast Pakistan.
Both the Pakistanis and the Taliban have closed the border in the past, although Torkham and the Chaman border crossing are vital for trade and travel between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Abdul Mateen Qani, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s interior ministry, accused the Pakistan Army of targeting civilians.
Qani, speaking in Kabul, said, “Pakistani forces opened fire on forces of the Islamic emirate in the Ghorki area near the Durand line in the Torkham area, prompting a response from the Afghan side.”
