The lawyer of detained PTI Senator Azam Swati, in a post-arrest bail petition filed in the Islamabad High Court on Saturday, said that he did not post controversial tweets against senior military officials and had no intention to “defame any respectable institution”.
Swati was arrested on November 27 after the Federal Investigation Agency booked him in Islamabad over a “highly obnoxious campaign of intimidating tweets […] against state institutions”. It was the second time that Swati was booked and arrested by the FIA over his tweets about army officials in less than two months.
Earlier this week, the senator approached a special court in Islamabad for bail. However, Special Judge Central Azam Khan dismissed the plea ruling that he had “committed the same offence twice”.
Subsequently, on Saturday, Swati filed a post-arrest bail petition through his lawyer Babar Awan in the Islamabad High Court, challenging the special court’s orders. The plea has named the state and Anees-Ur-Rehman, the technical assistant at FIA’s Cybercrime Reporting Centre in Islamabad, as respondents.
The FIA criminal complaint was filed through Rehman. It states that Swati was “falsely implicated due to political influences of a hostile regime” and the cases against him were registered with “malafide intention”.
The petition recalled that Swati was earlier remanded into FIA’s custody but nothing “incriminating” was recovered from him and hence he was sent to jail on judicial remand.
