The fourteen-year sentence handed to retired Lt Gen Faiz Hameed by a military court is unprecedented: a former ISI chief court-martialled and imprisoned. The establishment has presented the verdict as evidence of robust internal accountability. However, as details and allegations continue to surface, a more complex and concerning picture emerges. Rather than reflecting effective self-auditing, the case points to a prolonged period of institutional oversight failure—one that unfolded over more than a decade and was addressed only after a civilian’s petition brought the matter into formal scrutiny.

Within days of the verdict, senior political figures began making extraordinary claims. Former Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Zehri alleges that Hameed, in coordination with then Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, engineered the collapse of his elected provincial government in January 2018 through forced defections and the overnight creation of the Balochistan Awami Party.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif went further, alleging that Faiz Hameed played a central role in sustained political engineering beginning in the mid-2010s. He claims Hameed was instrumental in the events leading to Nawaz Sharif’s ouster in 2017, the manipulation of the 2018 elections, and the subordination of parliament to intelligence influence during Imran Khan’s tenure. Asif has also alleged that the violence of May 9, 2023, was not spontaneous but the outcome of prior planning involving senior actors.

Alongside these political allegations sits the 2017 Top City case, in which a civilian property developer accused Faiz Hameed, then DG ISI, of orchestrating an unlawful raid and extortion attempt. That case ultimately triggered the investigation. Taken together, the allegations suggest a consistent pattern: systematic political interference, abuse of authority, and criminal conduct spanning many years either undetected or deliberately ignored by the military’s internal oversight mechanisms.

© The Friday Times