ISLAMABAD: Former interior minister Rehman Malik has written to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, seeking formation of a judicial commission to probe WikiLeaks’ allegation that the US was given access to Pakistan’s national identity database during his tenure.

Speaking to reporters outside Parliament House on Thursday, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senator was reacting to a WikiLeaks tweet from June 6, where it recalled a diplomatic cable, leaked in 2011, which contained an account of meetings between former US Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano and top Pakistan officials, including Mr Malik.

Calling the report “totally baseless, factitious and fabricated”, he said no country was given access to the National Database and Registration Authority’s (Nadra) records.

He claimed that as interior minister, he had always rejected requests asking for access to travel records of Pakistani nationals and called on incumbent Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to “investigate this fake news as it is a matter of grave concern for him and many Pakistanis”.

Mr Malik also claimed that Usman Mobin, the current Nadra chairman, was chief technical officer at the time, and can be asked whether such access was granted to any country.

But the cable, dated from 2009, claimed that Mr Malik, along with then-interior secretary Kamal Shah and then Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) director Tariq Khosa, had told Ms Napolitano that they were reviewing the possibility of sharing passenger data for those travelling to and from Pakistan to the US and Canada.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2017