Home Latest News Forensic Firm that Authenticated Ex-CJP’s Alleged Audio Under Threat

Forensic Firm that Authenticated Ex-CJP’s Alleged Audio Under Threat

by Staff Report

File Photo. Daniel Leal-Olivas—AFP

Garrett Discovery says it has received thousands of calls about the leaked clip, with majority demanding its results be altered

Garrett Discovery, the U.S. firm that conducted the forensic analysis of a leaked audio clip allegedly featuring former chief justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar, on Wednesday said its staff had been receiving threatening calls to change the results of its findings.

“Today we received a call saying our lives are in danger and the same person said he is going to file in court against us for our work authenticating a file for FactFocus. 1000+ calls and chat requests on our site. Threatening our team to obtain a different result is unethical,” it said in a posting on Twitter.

Journalist Ahmad Noorani, writing for FactFocus, reported on the audio clip that has a man, purportedly the former chief justice, informing an unidentified individual that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam could not be released from prison prior to the 2018 general elections. “In this case, we will have to penalize Mian Sahib [Nawaz Sharif]. And ‘they’ say ‘we shall bring Khan Sahib.’ Regardless of the merit, we will have to do it, and even to his daughter [Maryam],” he allegedly says.

While both Nisar and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government have claimed that the audio is fake, Noorani has maintained that it has been forensically analyzed by Garrett Discovery and contains no splices or edits that appear on doctored files.

In a series of posts on Twitter, Garett Discovery said that it had also been contacted by private broadcaster Samaa News—which ran a story alleging that parts of the clip had been procured from a speech of the former CJP—but could not betray the confidentiality of its client. “We are not going to answer questions about our client, the work or make an opinion over the phone,” it added.

Meanwhile, Garett Discovery CEO Andrew Garett told daily Dawn that his firm has nothing to do with the politics of Pakistan and merely did the technical work of verifying the authenticity of the audio clip. Claiming that the firm had received over 2,000 calls about the clip in the past week, he said the majority wanted the report’s results altered. “Some of the calls have been threats, not of violence but pseudo threats,” he said. “Like, we cannot wait till they hang you. We will sue you.”

He also clarified that the work done to authenticate the clip had focused on verifying that it had not been edited—not who the speakers were or even whether or not it was real.

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