No charges pressed on trio
London, Sept. 4: Pakistan Test skipper Salman Butt and fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were grilled for so long on Friday by the Scotland Yard investigative team in connection with the spot-fixing scandal at the Kilburn police station in north London because of their lack of proficiency in English, the Pakistan high commissioner, Mr Wajed Shamsul Hasan, said.
“Salman Butt can speak a bit of English. But as regards to two other players, they can hardly speak English, they can hardly understand it. They had to be provided interpreters yesterday,” he told this newspaper.
“Interpreters were used extensively for two of them, so that’s how the entire proceedings took the whole day,” Mr Hasan said.
He said he did not know what the three cricketers planned to do. “At the end of the day, the police did not put any restraining order on them, did not detain them, did not put any charges against them, they were free to go and they are free to move about,” he said. “The police is not worried about the players.”
“They are free to do what they wish. Whatever I gathered when I talked to them on Thursday, they were very categorical that they would like to get the charges cleared against them. I am sure they will stay as long as they are needed,” Mr Hasan said.
The Pakistan high commissioner said that he had no apprehensions about the impartiality of the ICC, considering the current president of the cricket body is Sharad Pawar. “I would expect the ICC to be impartial because Pakistan played a major role in the election of Mr Pawar as the ICC chairman,” he said, adding that “as such I have no apprehensions, unless otherwise proven.”
The action taken by the ICC against the three cricketers was shocking, he said. “Mr Pawar had categorically said that no action would be taken against the cricketers till proven guilty. It was shocking for me that a categorical statement by the ICC president was disregarded by one of his employees,” Mr Hasan said. Explaining his insistence on labelling the spot-fixing scandal as a conspiracy against the Pakistan cricket team, Mr Hasan said: “When I said there was a conspiracy against Pakistan cricketers, the man in my mind was Mr Mazhar Majeed, who was shown on video with stacks of money. He was first arrested and then released by the Metropolitan police on match-fixing claims and then subsequently by the customs over money laundering charges,” he said. “The money laundering charge is something that has an Indian connection also. Indian bookies are involved in it. I am sure that you know Indian bookies are big people, they have a lot of money at stake, so it makes a wider thing to happen and it gets complicated also. That’s how I see that there was a conspiracy,” he said.
Refuting ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat’s statement on Friday afternoon that the Pakistan high commissioner had misunderstood him, Mr Wajed stuck to his stand that ICC did not inform him about the suspension of the three players.
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