ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani government minister resigned Saturday, officials said, after a controversial interview with the BBC in which he claimed the country's former chief spy had conspired to stage a military coup last year.
Climate change minister Mushahid Ullah Khan told the British broadcaster in an interview published online on Friday that the retired head of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), Lieutenant-General Zaheer-ul-Islam, had plotted to bring down the government of Nawaz Sharif during sit-in protests in Islamabad in 2014.
Khan said in the BBC interview that Islam had worked to trigger conflict between the Prime Minister and army chief General Raheel Sharif, and had planned on exploiting subsequent unrest to take over the country.
The bid failed, he said, when the civilian Intelligence Bureau (IB) — which was tapping some of Islam's telephone conversations — presented evidence of the plot to the Prime Minister, who then informed the army chief.
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