LAHORE: In a surprising development, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the
alleged mastermind of the October 18, 2007 twin suicide attacks on the
welcome procession of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan’s port city of
Karachi, who had shifted his jehadi base to the Waziristan region on
the Pak-Afghan border in 2008, has resurfaced in the country as a free
man.
However, the most astonishing aspect of his return is the fact that
the fugitive ameer of the al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked jehadi group
Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) has actually been freed by the Punjab
government, led by the younger brother of Ms Bhutto’s arch political
rival and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. According to informed
sources in the Pakistani security agencies, Qari was being kept under
house arrest at an undisclosed place in the Chishtian town of Punjab
since August 2010 and has just been freed – almost three weeks ago –
in the first week of December.
The sources say Qari Saifullah Akhtar had to abandon Waziristan, his
birth place, after he was wounded in a US drone attack in the area. He
subsequently travelled to Peshawar, the provincial capital of the
Khyber Pakhtunkhawaha province and then to the garrison town of
Rawalpindi for treatment before being arrested by the Punjab Police
and taken to Lahore. He was eventually put under house arrest in the
Chisthian town, only to be released recently. Interestingly, his
release orders coincide with the third death anniversary of Benazir
Bhutto who had named Qari Saifullkah in her posthumous book,
Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, as a principal suspect
in the October 18, 2007 attempt to kill her in Karachi, a few hours
after her homecoming.
In her book, which was published in February 2008, Bhutto had narrated
in detail the suicide attacks targeting her welcome procession as well
as the involvement of Qari Saifullah Akhtar in the assassination bid.
She wrote: “I was informed of a meeting that had taken place in Lahore
where the bomb blasts were planned… Three men belonging to a rival
political faction were hired for half a million dollars…. However, a
bomb maker was needed for the bombs. Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a
wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government. He
had been extradited by the United Arab Emirates and was languishing in
the Karachi central jail…. The officials in Lahore had turned to
Akhtar for help. His liaison with elements in the government was a
radical who was asked to make the bombs and he himself asked for a
fatwa making it legitimate to oblige. He got one. The bomb blasts took
place in the army cantonment area in Karachi”.
Subsequently, on February 26, 2008, Qari was arrested by the Musharraf
regime for the purpose of interrogation in the Bhutto murder, although
there were many in establishment circles who believed that Qari had
actually been taken into protective custody by his spy masters. The
HUJI chief is generally considered a handy tool of the intelligence
establishment. Whenever required, he is used and then dumped by his
spy masters. Qari was seized by the security agencies along with his
three sons in Ferozwala, near Lahore. He was then grilled by a joint
interrogation team comprising operatives from the Punjab Police, Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Special Investigation Group of the
Federal Investigation Agency.
Although Qari denied having played any role in the Bhutto murder, he
did tell his interrogators that since his 2007 release, he had been in
contact with former ISI chief Lt. Gen Hameed Gul and two other army
officers who had attempted to stage a coup to topple her government in
1995. “I was in touch with Lt. Gen Hameed Gul, Maj Gen Zaheerul Islam
Abbasi and former Brigadier Mustansar Billa”, Qari said in a 35-page
statement submitted to the Joint Investigation Team. Hameed Gul was
one of the three persons Bhutto had named as her possible assassins in
a letter to Musharraf, written in October 2007. Though Gul was retired
prematurely, Bhutto believed that he still maintained his former close
ties with the militant jehadis.
Ironically, Qari’s February 26, 2008 arrest established the fact that
despite all the charges leveled against him, he had been released much
before Benazir returned home.
Born in January 1959 in South Waziristan, Qari is a graduate of the
famous Jamia Binoria in Karachi, who was arrested and extradited from
the United Arab Emirates on August 7, 2004 on charges of plotting the
twin suicide attacks on General Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December
2003. But instead of trying to prosecute him, the agencies chose to
keep him under detention for the next two years and nine months,
without even filing any criminal charges against him, giving credence
to reports that he was a handy tool of the Pakistani establishment.
Qari’s ‘unprovoked’ arrest was challenged in the Supreme Court in the
first week of January 2005. On January 18, 2005, the apex court
dismissed the petition against his arrest and directed him to first
move the high court by filing a habeas corpus writ petition. But after
Benazir’s murder, it transpired that Qari had already been released by
the apex court after being told by the agencies that he was one of the
‘missing persons’ being sought by a Supreme Court bench headed by
Chief Justice Iftikhar. His name was in the list of persons being held
by the agencies without any formal charges having been filed against
them. But the Musharraf government had told the Supreme Court, on May
5, 2007, that Qari Saifullah was not in the custody of the State
agencies.
The concise report presented by the National Crisis Management Cell to
the court revealed that he was engaged in jehadi activities somewhere
in Punjab and not under detention. On May 21, 2007, Qari suddenly
reached his hometown in Mandi Bahauddin of Punjab. The release was
subsequently brought to the notice of the apex court by the Ministry
of Interior. Hashmat Habib, the counsel for Qari Saifullah told the
court that while setting him free, the intelligence officials had
informed his client that had they not picked him up, there was a
strong possibility of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation
taking him away for interrogation because of his alleged al-Qaeda and
Taliban links.
At the time of his arrest in August 2004 and his subsequent
extradition from the United Arab Emirates, the Pakistani authorities
had described the development as a major blow to the al-Qaeda
sponsored terrorist network and its local affiliates in Pakistan. On
March 20, 2008, Qari was produced before an Anti-Terrorism Court in
Karachi for his alleged role in the twin suicide attacks on Bhutto’s
welcome procession in Karachi. But few days later, Justice Khawaja
Naveed Ahmed of the Sindh High Court released him on bail, after the
investigation officer said that no evidence had been found to link him
with any terrorist activity. But he was rearrested the same day under
the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) and shifted to a Karachi safe
house. Two months later, on 8 June 2008, Qari was released by Sindh
Home Department as the two-month term of detention set under the MPO
had expired.
Though Qari Saifullah’s role in the Karachi suicide attack could not
be explored further due to an apparent lack of interest by the
agencies, his previous involvement in a failed coup plot in 1995 had
projected him as one of the deadliest jehadis who, from the
establishment’s viewpoint, had gone astray. The group of potential
plotters busted by the Military Intelligence at that time included
four serving army officers, headed by Major General Zaheerul Islam
Abbasi. Brigadier Mustansar Billa, who had also been arrested, was
described as the ideologue of the religiously motivated army men. The
arrested army officers were accused of plotting to first take over the
GHQ of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi during the Corps Commanders
Conference, and later overthrow the Benazir government to eventually
enforce their own brand of Islamic Shariah and Khilafat in Pakistan.
Qari Saifullah Akhtar was arrested on September 23, 1995 when
Pakistani Customs Intelligence personnel stopped a Brigadier’s staff
car, which was leading a cavalcade of several vehicles, including a
truck carrying arms and ammunitions. A total of 40 army officers,
including one Maj Gen, one Brig and five Colonels and 10 civilians
were rounded up. Video and audio cassettes of their statements that
were to be broadcast on Radio Pakistan and PTV were discovered as
well. A Military Intelligence circulation notified that the arrested
comprised two groups, the inner group of plotters who attempted to
topple the government and the larger group of sympathizers who
extended their moral/verbal support and were more or less motivated by
their plan to extend complete support to the “mujahedeen cause” in
Kashmir. The plan allegedly included plotting to kill Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto and some Cabinet members including the incumbent
President Asif Ali Zardari, who was federal minister for Environment
and Industries at that time.
The arms seized from the group included 26 AK-47s, one Shoulder
Mounted Rocket Launcher, 50 hand grenades, 63 AK-47 magazines, 60
pistols, 30 full commando uniforms, seven sets of walkie-talkies and
some thousand rounds of ammunition. The Field General Court Martial
(FGCM) was constituted at Attock and was presided by Maj Gen Zahid
Hasan amongst four other officers (two Brigadiers and two Colonels
including then Brig (later Lt Gen) Javed Alam Khan). The suspects were
charged under the Pakistan Army Act, 1952 and Pakistan Penal Code for
“conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline”,
“conspiring to wage war against Pakistan” and “attempting to seduce
any person from his allegiance to the government”.
The trial was quite straight forward as Qari Saifullah Akhtar decided
to become approver against his fellow plotters and acted as a star
prosecution witness. There was documentary evidence in the form of the
tapes, arms and ammunition and none of the accused really denied the
charges either. As simple a trial as it can get for a prosecution
lawyer. 24 prosecution and 25 defense witnesses were examined over a
period of nine months. After investigations were completed, the FGCM
started its proceedings on December 31, 1995 and the sentences were
announced on October 30, 1996.
Those plotters of the coup plan were convicted by the Field General
Court Martial (FGCM) and awarded different sentences ranging from two
to 14 years. After the dismissal of the second Bhutto government in
1996, he was released by the agencies; he went to Afghanistan and was
inducted into the cabinet of the Taliban ameer, Mullah Omar, as his
adviser on political affairs. Qari was one of the few jehadi leaders
from Pakistan who had escaped with Mullah Omar after the US-led Allied
Forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001.
amir.mir1969@gmail.com