Pakistan frees suspected Mumbai
plotter By Amir Mir
ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani court has
acquitted a key al-Qaeda operative and an alleged
plotter of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks
in a murder case, with witnesses withdrawing their
testimony, likely in fear of reprisals.
Major (retired) Haroon Ashiq, also known
as Abu Khattab, is a former Special Service Group
(SSG) commando of the Pakistan Army who became a
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) trainer after he left the
forces in 2000. He was charged with killing Dr
Abdul Saboor
Malik, the administrator of
the Sheikh Zayed Hospital in Lahore, but acquitted
on March 11 due to a lack of substantial evidence
after both prosecution witnesses retracted their
testimonies.
Malik was gunned down on
January 16, 2009 near his residence in the Model
Town area of Lahore. The police had blamed Haroon
for the murder because of Saboo's ties with the
Ahmadiyah minority community, which is detested by
al-Qaeda and Taliban.
Haroon is a close
associate of Lashkar-e-Toiba's chief operational
commander, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who is currently
being tried by a Pakistani court for allegedly
masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks
of 2008 which killed 172 people.
Haroon
had left the LeT in 2003 over differences with
Lakhvi, joining commander Ilyas Kashmiri, the amir
of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HuJI) a few years
later. He was arrested in 2009 for the murder of
Major General (retired) Amir Faisal Alvi, the
first general officer commanding of the elite
Special Service Group, on the orders of Kashmiri,
but subsequently acquitted.
Alvi had led
several successful military operations against
al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal belt
of South Waziristan, including the 2004 Angoor Ada
operation in North Waziristan where many Arab and
Chechen militants were killed or arrested and
turned over to the Americans. Major Gen Alvi was
shot dead in Islamabad on November 19, 2008 while
driving his car.
The police blamed
Kashmiri for the murder, alleging that Haroon was
the shooter. A 12-page charge sheet submitted
against Haroon in an anti-terrorism court in
Rawalpindi stated that Alvi was killed to avenge
the role he had played in the fight against
al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal areas
of Pakistan.
The charge-sheet prepared by
the Koral police station in Rawalpindi said Haroon
and two others - Nawaz Khan and Ashfaq Ahmed -
were involved in the assassination. It also said
Kashmiri had already been named by the
intelligence agencies for involvement in the
October 2008 kidnapping for ransom of Satish
Anand, a Karachi-based renowned Hindu film
producer and distributor.
After Satish
Anand was rescued in April 2009 and the kidnappers
arrested, it transpired during subsequent
interrogations that Haroon was involved in the
murder of Alvi. According to the murder charge
sheet, on the day of the assassination, the three
accused - Haroon, Ashfaq and Nawaz - followed Alvi
when he left his residence in the Bharia Town area
of Rawalpindi and killed him along with his
driver.
Haroon's subsequent disclosures
during police custody about the links and the
activities of Ilyas Kashmiri sent a chill of fear
down the spine of his interrogators. Haroon was
commissioned in the army in 1987. However, he
sought premature retirement in 2001.
Hailing from the Bhimbar district of the
Pakistani-Administered Kashmir, Major Haroon was a
resident of the Taj Bagh locality in Harbanspura,
Lahore. In 2000, when an army officer, Haroon
along with his younger brother (Captain Khurram
Ashiq, also an army officer), met Commander Zakiur
Rehman Lakhvi and eventually joined
Lashkar-e-Toiba.
He soon became a trainer
of the LeT fighters who were dispatched to the
Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir to wage
"jihad" against the Indian security forces.
However, he had to leave the LeT in December 2003
after developing differences with commander
Lakhvi.
Haroon's younger brother, Khurram,
was an assault commander of the elite
anti-terrorist Zarrar Company of the Special
Service Group of the Pakistan Army. The Ashiq
family was Salafi and the brothers worshipped Ibn
Taymiyyah and Syed Qutb, two presiding saints of
al-Qaeda who are the principal inspirations for
the type of Islamic ideology pursued by the terror
group's current leader, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Asia Times Online's slain Bureau Chief
Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was kidnapped and
murdered in May 2011, wrote in his book Inside
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Beyond Bin Laden and
9/11 that for Khurram, faith came before
country.
Shahzad noted that while on a
United Nations mission in Sierra Leone, Khurram
built a mosque and a madrassa in Sierra Leone,
despite the opposition of his commander, Brigadier
Ahmad Shuja Pasha, later chief of the ISI (p 85).
Both brothers (Haroon and Khurram) had joined the
LeT, but had soon realized that the LeT was just
an extension of Pakistan's armed forces. (p 86).
In December 2006, Haroon and Khurram went
to Wana in South Waziristan where they met
Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Nazir. They
later traveled to Miramshah in North Waziristan,
met with Kashmiri and finally joined hands with
him.
In 2007, Khurram went to
Afghanistan's Helmand province to fight against
Western forces and eventually lost his life in
March 2007 while fighting alongside the Afghan
Taliban. Saleem Shahzad writes in his book that
the 26/11 terrorist attacks that killed 166 people
in Mumbai and brought India and Pakistan to the
brink of war were scripted by officers from
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and
approved by al-Qaeda commanders.
Carried
out by a group of LeT terrorists who were
allegedly trained in Pakistan, the Mumbai episode
was actually the revival of an old plan by the ISI
to distract the Pakistan Army from the Waziristan
tribal region and focus on fighting India instead.
This nearly succeeded as the Indo-Pak tensions
soared following the 26/11 attacks.
Saleem
Shahzad wrote:
With Ilyas Kashmiri's immense
expertise on Indian operations, he stunned
al-Qaeda leaders with the suggestion that
expanding the war theatre was the only way to
overcome the present impasse. He suggested
conducting an operation in India massive enough
to bring India and Pakistan to war and with that
all proposed operations against al-Qaeda would
be brought to a grinding halt. Al-Qaeda
excitedly approved the proposal. Kashmiri then
handed over the plan to a very able former Army
Major Haroon Ashiq, who was also a former LeT
commander who was still very close with Zakiur
Rahman Lakhvi. Major Haroon knew about a plan by
Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence that had
been in the pipelines for several months with
the official policy to drop it as it was to have
been a low-profile routine proxy operation in
India through LeT. Major Haroon Ashiq, with the
help of Ilyas Kashmiri's men in India, hijacked
the ISI plan and turned it into the devastating
attacks that shook Mumbai on November 26, 2008
and brought Pakistan and India to the brink of a
war."
As an al-Qaeda operative, Major
Haroon enjoyed strong contacts inside the Pakistan
Army. Saleem Shahzad writes in his book:
Major Haroon developed a silencer
for the AK-47. This became an essential
component of al-Qaeda's special guerrilla
operations. He then visited China to procure
night-vision glasses. The biggest task was to
clear them through customs in Pakistan, Haroon
called on his friend Captain Farooq, who was
President [Pervez] Musharraf's security officer.
Farooq went to the airport in the president's
official car and received Haroon at the
immigration counter. In the presence of Farooq,
nobody dared touch Haroon's luggage, and the
night-vision glasses arrived in Pakistan without
any hassle
. (p. 88).
Saleem
Shahzad further disclosed that al-Qaeda targeted
NATO supplies through Haroon in 2008:
"Major Haroon Ashiq travelled
through North Waziristan to Karachi. When night
fell, he stayed in army messes in the
countryside. Being an ex-army officer he was
allowed that facility. He spoke English and Urdu
with an unmistakable military accent' (p. 92).
He took revenge on Major General Amir Faisal
Alvi because the latter had killed a lot of
al-Qaeda men - including Abdur Rehman Kennedy -
as leader of a Pakistan Army assault on Angoor
Adda in North Waziristan. Haroon ambushed Alvi
in Islamabad jumping out of his car and killing
Alvi with his army revolver' (p 93).
Major Haroon's interrogation officer
in Adiala jail of Rawalpindi told Saleem Shahzad
that he had started admiring his prisoner. During
the interrogation, he admitted to killing Major
General Alvi with the help of a man named Major
Basit from Karachi.
According to Haroon's
own police confession, he was told by Ilyas
Kashmiri in early 2008 that the militants were
facing financial problems and were in dire need of
funds. Kashmiri tasked him with raising funds by
kidnapping affluent people living in urban areas.
Satish Anand subsequently became the first
influential person to be abducted from Karachi.
Haroon's interrogators say Ilyas Kashmiri also
reportedly paid Rs125,000 to Haroon for killing
Alvi.
Despite the revelations from his
interrogation, when produced before the court,
Haroon retracted his confession. At the next
stage, most witnesses and complainants withdrew
their testimony against him. Subsequently, a
special judge of an Anti-Terrorism Court in
Rawalpindi, Raja Ikhlaq Hussain, acquitted Haroon,
Nawaz and Ashfaq, again over lack of evidence.
Haroon is not the only al-Qaeda operative
to have been acquitted by a Pakistani court for
these reasons. The courts have failed to convict a
single terrorist during the last three years over
the dozens of high-profile terror attacks in
Rawalpindi and Islamabad between 2007 and 2010.
These attacks mainly targeted the security forces
and killed over 200 people.
According to
available statistics, of the two dozen cases of
suicide attacks targeting the security and law
enforcement agencies in and around these cities
during last three years, the conviction rate
remains zero.
This dire statistic not only
affects the resolve of the security forces in
fighting terrorism, but also undermines any
respect for the judiciary. However, the judicial
circles in Rawalpindi blame both the police and
the intelligence agencies for the high acquittal
rate, asking how can a judge convict without
evidence or witnesses?
Amir Mir
is a senior Pakistani journalist and the author of
several books on the subject of militant Islam and
terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder
trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
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