ISLAMABAD: Defense Minister Khawaja Asif on Saturday announced “more legal action” will be taken against former spy chief Faiz Hameed, days after he was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a military court. 

Pakistan military’s media wing announced this week that Hameed, who was the director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 2019 to 2021, has been sentenced to 14 years after being found guilty of misusing authority and government resources, violating the Official Secrets Act and causing “wrongful loss to persons.”

The former spy chief was widely seen as close to ex-prime minister Imran Khan. Hameed, who retired from the army in December 2022, is accused by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of bringing down the government of his elder brother, Nawaz Sharif, in 2017. 

The PML-N alleges Hameed worked with then opposition leader Khan to plot Nawaz’s ouster through a series of court cases, culminating in the Supreme Court disqualifying of him from office in 2017 for failing to disclose income and ordering a criminal investigation into his family over corruption allegations. Khan’s party and Hameed have both denied the allegations. 

“A senior officer and former head of the ISI has been convicted in a trial that lasted for a long period of 15 months,” Asif told reporters in Sialkot. 

“There are more problems, charges on which legal action will be taken and that won’t take long.”

Asif repeated the PML-N’s allegations, accusing Hameed of having Nawaz disqualified through the court cases. He accused the former spy chief of propelling Khan to the office of the prime minister, blaming him for having leaders and supporters of the PML-N arrested during Khan’s premiership. 

Pakistan military said this week that Faiz’s alleged role in “fomenting vested political agitation and instability in cahoots with political elements” was being handled separately. Many interpreted this as the military alluding to the May 9, 2023, nationwide unrest, when angry Khan supporters took to the streets and attacked military and government installations after he was briefly detained on corruption charges. 

Asif said Faiz’s “brain and planning” was behind the May 2023 unrest. 

“These two personalities can not be separated,” the defense minister said, referencing Khan and Hameed. 

Senior military officers are rarely investigated or convicted in Pakistan, where the security establishment plays an outsized role in politics and national governance. 

Hameed’s sentencing comes just days after Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir was appointed as Pakistan’s first chief of defense forces, marking a major restructuring of the military command.

Former prime minister Khan’s PTI party has distanced itself from Hameed’s conviction, referring to it as an “internal matter of the military institution.”