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Lashkar’s Ishaq had clout even in jail
Amir Mir
Friday, July 15, 2011
LAHORE: The clout of Malik Mohammad Ishaq, one of the founding members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), who was set free on Thursday after 14 years, can be gauged from the fact that he was flown from a Lahore jail to the garrison town of Rawalpindi by the military authorities through a special chartered flight to hold talks with the fidayeen attackers belonging to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan who had stormed the GHQ building on October 10, 2009.
Malik Ishaq, self-confessed hitman of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, who himself admitted to a Urdu daily in October 1997 that he had been “instrumental in the killing of 102 people”, was engaged by the military authorities after the TTP fidayeen attackers, who were strapped with suicide jackets, took hostage 42 people, including many of the security force personnel. The terrorists had listed their demands and expressed their desire to directly hold talks with the Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. The hostage takers also gave a list of the jailed militants belonging to several Sunni Deobandi militant and sectarian groups, seeking their release, failing which, the hostages were threatened to be killed one by one.
However, as a time buying tactic, the negotiators decided to rope in some key leaders of several jehadi and sectarian groups to hold talks with terrorists. Special planes were subsequently flown to Lahore, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan to bring to Rawalpindi Malik Ishaq, a key leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, the chief of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil, the ameer of Harkatul Mujahideen, and Mufti Abdul Rauf, the younger brother of Maulana Masood Azhar who is also the acting ameer of Jaish-e-Mohammad. And all the three were requested by the military authorities to hold talks with the hostage takers.
All the four jehadi leaders were roped in by the military authorities because of their sectarian link with the fidayeen attackers. During the talks, the authorities managed to send in some security forces personnel in plain clothes with an excuse to deliver food into the building where the hostages were being kept. The subsequent rescue operation on the morning of October 11, 2009 was carried out on the basis of the information provided by them regarding the exact number of hostage takers and the positions they had taken inside the seized security offices of the General Headquarters. The terrorists had threatened to kill them in batches of ten every hour if their demands were not accepted. The negotiators had asked the attackers to wait till the next morning for the release of the jailed militants so that they could be brought to Rawalpindi.
However, the rescue operation was launched at 6 in the morning before the expiry of the deadline, prompting three of the hostage takers to explode themselves. The fourth was shot point blank in the head while the fifth one, Aqeel alias Dr Osman was arrested alive. Interestingly, all the four jehadi leaders who were engaged by the military authorities to hold talks with the GHQ hostage takers had earlier been roped in by the Musharraf regime in July 2007 to negotiate with the fanatic clerics of the infamous Lal Mosque in the heart of Islamabad.
Malik Ishaq is finally a free man, after being bailed out by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the last case of the Sri Lankan cricket team attack “due to lack of evidence and [the] weak case of the prosecution”. All that the prosecution could do was produce two witnesses who claimed to have overheard conversations between some people who were planning to attack the Sri Lankan team.
He was bailed out by a division bench comprising Justice Shahid Siddiqui and Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa who expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of the prosecution in establishing its case against the accused.
The court had said while granting bail that the judiciary has to face the wrath of the public when it releases the accused due to lack of evidence and weak case of the prosecution. Malik Ishaq was arrested in 1997 for involvement in sectarian murders - almost all of his victims were members of the minority Shia community. He was charged with murders of 70 people in 44 different cases but he escaped conviction in each case due to “lack of evidence” against him. Malik Ishaq’s associates in Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had unleashed a violent campaign when he stood trial for the deaths of 12 people at a gathering of the Ghalvi family in 1997.
As a matter of fact, most of the major terrorist attacks carried out in Pakistan since 9/11 appear to have a common grandmother - the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or the Army of Jhangvi - an anti-Shia Sunni-Deobandi sectarian turned anti-America jehadi organisation which is currently the group of choice for hard-core Pakistani militants who are adamant to pursue their ambitious jehadi agenda. Launched in 1996 as a Sunni sectarian group, the Lashkar today has deep links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban and is considered to be the most violent terrorist organisation operating in Pakistan with the help of its lethal suicide squad. As with most Sunni sectarian and militant groups, almost the entire LeJ leadership is made up of people who have fought in Afghanistan and most of its cadre strength has been drawn from the numerous Sunni madrassas in Pakistan.
Besides receiving sanctuary from the Taliban in Afghanistan for their terrorist activities in Pakistan, the LeJ operatives used to fight alongside the Taliban militants. Being part of the broader Deoband movement, the LeJ secured considerable assistance from other Deobandi outfits.
The LeJ also has an effectual working relationship with other Deobandi religio-political and terrorist organisations at a personal level, if not at the organisational level. Also, Pakistani intelligence findings show that al-Qaeda has been involved with training of the LeJ members, and that the Lashkar militants also fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance troops in Afghanistan.
He confesses to having a hand in over 100 murders and gets away with it.
