LAHORE: Although a charge sheet filed by the Pakistani police in the November 2008 gruesome murder of Major General (retd) Amir Faisal Alvi, the former General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the elite Special Services Group (SSG) of the Pakistan Army has accused the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) henchmen for the murder to avenge the role he played in the fight against Taliban linked militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the LeT has denied the charge as baseless, saying the chief plotter named in the murder case – Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri – is the chief of the Azad Kashmir chapter of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) which has nothing to do with the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
A charge-sheet submitted by the Islamabad police in an anti-terrorism court on May 12 alleged that Major General Faisal Alvi was killed by the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba and the murder might have been orchestrated by some pro-Taliban elements in the Army because the deceased had been involved in carrying out several major military operations conducted by the Special Services Group commandos in the restive Waziristan region, especially “Operation Mountain Lion”, which was conducted jointly by the American and British troops in the restive Pak-Afghan tribal belt. The operations on the Pakistani side of the border were carried out with the help of the Special Services Group commandos to track down fugitive al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. In one such military operation carried out in Angoor Adda area of Waziristan in October 2004, a special SSG unit led by Alvi had killed 12 suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. General Alvi was the real brother of Nadira Naipaul, the wife of renowned Indian novelist V.S. Naipaul.
According to the charge-sheet prepared by the Koral police station in Islamabad, those involved and already arrested in the murder include three Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives Major (retd) Haroon Rasheed, a resident of Azad Kashmir; Mohammad Nawaz Khan of Peshawar and Ashfaq Ahmed of Okara. The charge sheet says the murder was carried out on the instructions of Commander Ilyas Kashmiri who had provided funds and weapons. The charge sheet added that Ilyas Kashmiri had also been named by the intelligence agencies for involvement in the October 2008 kidnapping for ransom of Satish Anand, a Karachi-based renowned film producer and distributor as well as the real uncle of Juhi Chawla, a known Bollywood actress.
According to the charge sheet, after Satish was recovered in the last week of April 2009 and the kidnappers arrested, it transpired during interrogations that one of them – Major (Retd) Haroon Rasheed alias Abu Khattab – was a former Pakistani Army officer and was involved in the murder of General Alvi. According to the charge sheet, the three accused – Haroon, Ashfaq and Nawaz followed Major General Faisal Alvi when he left his residence in Bharia Town in Rawalpindi for his private office in Islamabad and killed him and his driver near PWD Colony.
However, a spokesman for the Lashkar-e-Toiba has denied any involvement of its members in the murder of Major General Faisal Alvi as claimed by Islamabad police in the charge sheet prepared against the three arrested accused. According to the LeT spokesman Dr Abdullah Ghaznavi, no member of the organization had been arrested in connection with the murder of Major General Alvi and those named in the murder charge sheet as LeT members are in fact the members of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami. He pointed out, as per the charge sheet, the chief plotter of the Alvi murder is Commander Ilyas Kashmiri, who is the ameer of the Azad Kashmir chapter of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) who has nothing to do with the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
The spokesperson said his organization had nothing to do with the killing of the retired general and the accusations against the LeT were baseless. He said that the police could get confessional statement from the arrested men using torture and other tactics. While Qari Saifullah Akhtar is the central ameer of the HUJI, Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri is the ameer of the Azad Kashmir chapter of the HUJI. He happens to be a veteran of the Kashmir jehad and had spent several years in an Indian jail. Kashmiri was arrested by Pakistani authorities after the December 2003 twin suicide attacks on President General Pervez Musharraf’s presidential cavalcade in Rawalpindi. But he was released a few weeks later, making him shift his base to the North Waziristan region on the Pak-Afghan tribal belt and join hands with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Commander Baitullah Mehsud.
Having switched from the freedom struggle in Jammu and Kashmir to the Taliban-led resistance against the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Ilyas Kashmiri also established a training camp in the Razmak area of Waziristan and shifted most of his warriors from his Kotli training camp which is 20km from Kotli in Azad Kashmir, a capacity for training 800 warriors. Harkatul Jehadul Islami went into Kashmir in 1991 but was at first opposed by the Wahhabi elements there because of its refusal to criticize the grand Deobandi congregation of Tableeghi Jamaat and its quietist posture. As days passed, the HUJI warriors were recognised as Afghans. It finally had more martyrs in the jehad of Jammu & Kashmir than any other militia. Its resolve and organisation were recognised when foreigners were seen fighting side by side with its Punjabi warriors. However, the HuJI activities in Jammu and Kashmir have progressively declined since 9/11, especially after Commander Ilyas Kashmiri shifted his base from the capital of Azad Kashmir to North Waziristan.
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