Pakistan High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, has attacked -- yet again -- the International Cricket Council (ICC) saying that the world body's decision to drop tainted pacer Mohammed Aamer from the list of annual awards nominees shows that 'there is a rat in the whole affair'.

Hasan said that by removing Aamer from the list of nominees for the Emerging Player of the Year award, the ICC has violated the 'general principle of law -- innocent until proven guilty'.

'I have learnt that ICC has taken cricketer Aamer's name off the list of 'Players of the Year'. What happened to the general principle of law 'innocent until proven guilty',' Hasan said in a statement late Friday.

'After the shocking, arbitrary and high-handed suspension of the three Pakistani cricketers through the ICC's uncalled for action, nothing is coming to me as a surprise. Rather, my apprehensions that there is a rat in the whole affair are being strengthened. It is emerging as a fishy situation where pieces have now started falling in place to convince me that there is more than meets the eye,' he said.

Hasans said that ICC's act to suspend the three cricketers, captain Salman Butt and pacers Mohammed Asif and Aamer was 'malafide and sinister' and said it was done to cover up its own wrong doings.

'As I said in my Thursday's statement that after the request by the three players to PCB, through me, for their voluntary withdrawal from playing in the current tour until their names have been cleared and their honour vindicated, ICC's action was not only in bad taste but was also self-serving, malafide and intriguingly sinister,' Hasan said.

'I would rather add that ICC's hasty decision was aimed at covering up its own acts of omission and commission. Its notice to the players appears to have been aimed at influencing the legal process and to prejudice the ongoing police investigation,' he said.

--Indo-Asian-News Service

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