Thaindian News

Islamabad, April 20 (IANS) Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari Tuesday overturned the 1996 termination of Interior Minister Rehman Malik as additional director general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) into retirement and approved the payment of his back-dated perks.
Quoting sources, Online news agency reported that Malik had termed his dismissal as vindictive and had urged the law ministry to convert this into retirement.

The law ministry, after reviewing the legal complexities, sent its approval to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who passed it on to Zardari.

The overturning of Malik’s termination has been done under section 23 of the Civil Servants Act.

Malik, who began his career as an immigration officer, became the FIA’s additional director general during Benazir Bhutto’s second term as prime minister in the mid-1990s.

Malik was associated with anti-terrorism and anti-money launching operations of FIA, but was stripped of his post after Bhutto was dismissed in November 1996.

He then fled into exile in Britain where he began a flourishing business.

He returned to the country in October 2007 after then president Pervez Musharraf promulgated an amnesty against graft that enabled Bhutto, her husband Zardari and 255 other politicians, bureaucrats and army officers to return home.

The Supreme Court in December 2009, declared the amnesty, in the form of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), unconstitutional and ordered the revival of all the cases that had been closed under it.

These cases are now in various stages of being reopened.