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ISI may be hiding India's Most Wanted fugitive militant
 Denying that Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of the pro-Kashmir jehadi group, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), has been arrested from the Sialkot city of Punjab, the Pakistani authorities have said his whereabouts are unknown and he might have fled to the trouble-ridden Waziristan region. But some intelligence officials believe that Masood Azhar, who had to be released by India following the hijacking of an Air India plane in 2000, could be living under the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence in the garrison town of Rawalpindi which also houses the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army and those of the ISI.Following the June 17 arrest of five JeM activists from Punjab's Sialkot district, there were rumours that among them was Azhar, whom the Indian government wants extradited. But Pakistani intelligence sources say a consensus exists in the establishment that Masood Azhar should not be handed over to India under any circumstances. The sources said the official stance of the Pakistani government remains that Azhar had abandoned his Bahawalpur headquarters following the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks and is still at large. However, some intelligence sources did not rule out the possibility of the JeM chief's moving to some ISI safe house in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, as had been the case with Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the ameer of the Harkatul Mujahideen, already renamed as Jamiatul Ansar, The sources pointed out that earlier this month, the Indian government's efforts in the United Nations to place sanctions on Maulana Masood Azhar received a major setback, after London surprisingly joined hands with Beijing to block New Delhi's request for proscribing the JeM chief under the United Nations' Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions resolution No 1267. The sources claimed that this would not have been possible had Britain and China not been persuaded by Pakistan government to do so. India had wanted Azhar to be included in the sanctions list just as the Jamaatul Daawa and its head Hafiz Mohammed Saeed along with other LeT operatives were proscribed after 26/11. The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) or "the Army of the Prophet Mohammad," is one of the deadliest militant groups operating from Pakistan and waging 'jehad' against the Indian security forces in Jammu & Kashmir. It was launched by Maulana Masood Azhar at the behest of the ISI in February 2000, shortly after he was released from an Indian jail, in exchange for hostages on board an Indian Airlines plane which was hijacked by five armed Kashmiri militants and taken to Kandahar in December 1999. While resuming his activities in Pakistan almost immediately after his release, Maulana Masood Azhar announced the formation of his own militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, with the prime objective of fighting out the Indian security forces in Kashmir. Masood Azhar was the ideologue of another militant group, the Harkatul Ansar, which was banned in 1997 by the US State Department, due to its alleged link with Osama bin Laden. Therefore, the Jaish is ideologically an extension of the Harkatul Ansar which rechristened itself as Harkatul Mujahideen in 1998, a year after being banned. In December 2008, almost a week after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, the Pakistani authorities placed restrictions on the movement of Masood Azhar by confining him to his multi-storied concrete compound in the Model Town area of Bahawalpur. The action was taken in the wake of Indian government's demand to hand over three persons to Delhi --Masood Azhar, Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon. India had sought their extradition by citing a 1989 agreement signed by Director General of the Central Bureau of Investigation and Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency which binds both the agencies to collaborate with each other to trace out the most wanted terrorists and criminals and hand them over to their respective counterpart. The Indian demand said that Masood Azhar was wanted for his alleged involvement in the 2001 attacks on the Indian parliament. However, the Indian demand was followed by media reports that Masood Azhar has abandoned his Jaish headquarters in the Model Town area of Bahawalpur and temporarily shifted his base to the trouble-stricken South Waziristan region in the wake the mounting Indian pressure for his extradition. However, in the second week of April 2009, Masood Azhar was declared 'officially' missing from Pakistan. A 13 January 2009 new report in Daily Times quoted official sources in Islamabad as having said that the Jaish chief has abandoned his headquarters in Bahawalpur and was missing now. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik officially declared that Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim were not in Pakistan adding that Islamabad would not provide protection and refuge to any criminal. However, Indian External Affairs Minister Paranab Mukherjee ridiculed Pakistan for denying the 'obvious presence' of the Jaish chief, saying: "India had several times got different information from Pakistan on Masood Azhar and it was not unusual to hear such denials from Pakistani officials". Posted by: Fred 2009-06-24 |
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