Shahid wrote: How the Pakistani Taliban Became a Deadly Force Saleem Shahzad was killed because he wrote that the Pakistan Navy was penetrated by Al Qaeda and explained the PNS Mehran assault by terrorists on 2 May 2011 as a sequel to the negotiations between the Navy and Al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri for the release some Navy officials arrested for being linked to Al Qaeda. He was probably going to write next about similar penetration in the other two arms of the Pakistani military. He informed some press and human rights circles that he feared the ISI would kill him. Ilyas Kashmiri, was a senior al-Qaeda operative and leader of the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI)[He served in the Pakistan Army and according to several sources, he was an operative of the elite Special Service Group (SSG), Ilyas Kashmiri’s Mumbai Operation was greatly helped by one David Coleman Headley. Headley or Daud Gilani was the son of Salim Gilani director general of Radio Pakistan and his American wife Serrill, a beautiful girl of dubious character who in time left Salim Gilani to return to a dissolute life in the US. She had left Daud behind with Gilani but the boy fell into bad ways, failing to pass the Hasan Abdal Cadet School but where he made friends with boys who later became important officers in the Pakistan Army. Adnan Rashid, a high profile prisoner who escaped from Bannu Central Prison A former junior technician of Pakistan Air Force, Besides Adnan, four others -- ex-chief technician Khalid Mehmood, ex-senior technician, Karam Din, ex-corporal Nawazish and ex-junior technician Niaz Mohammad -- were sentenced to death whereas another junior technician, Nasrullah, was sentenced to life imprisonment. A soldier of Pakistan Army, Abdul Islam Siddiqui, who was separately tried in the same case by a court martial, had already been hanged on Aug 20, 2005. The Taliban commander, who is known as Dr. Usman, led the 10-man assault team that a few days ago attacked the front checkpoint at Army General Headquarters, Dr. Usman was previously in the custody of Pakistani security forces for his suspected involvement in the suicide attack at the Islamabad Marriott in September 2008. Dr. Usman was detained along with Rana Ilyas, Muhammad Hameed Afzal, and Tehseenullah Khan, according to a report in Daily Times from October 2008. The four men were described as being linked to an organized terrorist network operating in the NWFP and Punjab. Dr. Usman, who is also known as Mohammad Aqeel, served in the Pakistani Army Medical Corps until 2006, when he left the military and joined the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Daily Times reported. Major-General (r) Amir Faisal Alavi of the SSG was killed in Islamabad on 19 November 2008 by Major (r) Haroon Ashiq on orders from Ilyas Kashmiri. Major Haroon Ashiq, also known as Abu Khattab, is a former commando of the Special Service Group (SSG) of the Pakistan Army who eventually became a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) trainer after permanently leaving the army in 2000. He was a close associate of LeT’s chief operational commander, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, It was in 2000 that Ashiq, then an army officer, along with his younger brother (Captain Khurram Ashiq, also an army officer), met Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and joined the LeT. Ashiq told his interrogators that his younger brother Captain Khurram, who was an assault commander of the elite anti-terrorist Zarrar Company of the SSG, also left the armed Forces in 2003 to join the LeT. Captain Khurram Ashiq, who had defected to al Qaeda to die fighting the Nato troops in Helmand in Afghanistan. Khurram’s brother, Major Haroon Ashiq, followed him to North Waziristan along with another officer, Major Abdul Rehman. As an al Qaeda terrorist, Haroon enjoyed contacts inside the army: “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 the customs in Pakistan. Haroon called on his friend Captain Farooq, who was President 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 [Farooq was a member of the Hizbut Tahrir, a fact discovered by the military intelligence as late as nine months later his posting as Musharraf’s security officer. After being spotted, he was briefly arrested and then retired from the Pakistan Army.]” ‘In custody he admitted to killing Major General Alavi and kidnapping Hindu filmmaker Satish Anand with the help of one Major Basit from Karachi. After he discovered that Anand had no money to give he released him on orders from al Qaeda’s Ilyas Kashmiri — ‘if he embraced Islam’ — which Anand immediately did . Saleem Shahzad’s book highlights the dominance of al Qaeda in Pakistan, including a highly infected Pakistan Army, and gives only a marginal status to its ancillary terrorists. The Punjabi Taliban he subordinates to the Haqqani Network, which in turn is a wing of al Qaeda but is known as a protégé of the Pakistan Army.........
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 06:18:39 +0000
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