PTI cipher narrative dead after Donald Lu’s testimony: Sherry

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Vice President Senator Sherry Rehman on Thursday said the cipher narrative had now been deciphered as a web of deception not only within Pakistan but also within the American Congress.

“The cipher saga will go down in history as a glaring example of manipulating national interests for narrow political gains,” she asserted while commenting on the statement of American diplomat Donald Lu during a session of the US Foreign Affairs Committee in which he explicitly decoded the cipher statement as deceitful, saying that it was built on a foundation of falsehood and utilized to serve the political agenda of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Testifying before a congressional panel on Wednesday, Donald Lu served as a key witness in the hearing titled ‘Pakistan after the elections: examining the future of democracy in Pakistan and the US-Pakistan relationship’, organized by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee. Lu unequivocally said the cipher saga was “completely false”, dismissing Khan’s assertion that the US orchestrated the vote of no-confidence against him in April 2022, along with the claim that Lu had sent a cipher advocating the ouster of the then prime minister.

Sherry said an audio leak revealed discussions where Khan and his associates encrypted to manipulate the cipher for political purposes. She said clarifications were decrypted during the case hearing of Imran Khan’s principal secretary, showing how a diplomatic communication was exploited for political and personal benefits. “The cipher narrative will be remembered as the worst example of putting domestic and foreign interests at stake to achieve petty political goals,” she said.