Attorney General Malik Qayyum has sought Rs 300 million damage claim and a public apology from a top international rights organisation that released an audio tape in which he allegedly acknowledged regime's plans to rig Monday's parliamentary polls.
According to his office in Islamabad, a legal notice had been served on New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Saturday. The notice called the airing of the tape and subsequent publication of news items as a 'breach of fundamental rights of privacy' and insisted that it constituted a criminal offence by the group.
Qayyum, however, issued a prompt denial with a stern threat of legal action the same day. Issued by his legal firm, Qayyum and Associates, on attorney general's behalf, the notice asked HRW directors both in London and New York to remove what it called the defamatory audio tape from its website.
The HRW said the recording was made during a phone interview between the attorney general and a reporter in November last year, immediately after Musharraf purged top judiciary and suspended the Constitution to frustrate legal challenges to his re-election a month earlier.
The notice demanded that the group must reveal its source - the name of journalist, who recorded the voice and then provided it to the HRW. The notice called the news item as 'fabricated and doctored'. And even it was taken as true, it added, still it constituted the breach of the fundamental right privacy and a criminal offence.
APP ADDS: Malik Muhammad Qayyum will address a press conference here today at a local hotel regarding the audio tape released by Human Right Watch (HRW).