LAHORE: In an apparent tit for tat move against the recent filing of a
lawsuit with an American Court against Pakistan’s premier spy agency,
the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), and one of its jehadi proxy,
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), for their involvement in the 2008 Mumbai
terrorist attacks, the Pakistani authorities have allowed THEIR police
to register a murder case against a senior official of the CIA,
operating from Islamabad.
Based on an application by Kareem Khan of Muchikhel, Mirali, North
Waziristan, the murder case has been filed against Jonathan Banks on
charges of providing operational guidance for the drone attacks in the
Pakistani tribal region, including one that killed the complainant’s
son and brother. The Pakistani move is likely to become a symbolic
document in Islamabad’s counter-terrorism ties with the United States.
Kareem Khan’s application for an FIR against the CIS official caps two
weeks of activity by a group of protesters from the country’s
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) who had camped outside the
parliament, pleading for an end to drone attacks. It is the first time
since the American drone attacks started in 2004 that some victims of
the missile strikes have taken an initiative for a legal action
against the US authorities.
However, the billion dollar question being raised in the diplomatic
circles of Islamabad is: who actually tipped off the poor Pakistani
petitioner about the identity of the putative CIA operative and his
presence in Islamabad? Even the most well-informed sources in
Islamabad would not have access to such privileged piece of
information. For this to have become a part of Kareem’s application
indicates that the mood in Islamabad’s corridors of power is changing
with regard to drone attacks and their usefulness. Islamabad’s
diplomatic circles are abuzz with speculation as to what could have
caused this change of mood.
One reason being cited is the lawsuit filed on November 19, 2010 with
a New York Court with the backing of the White House against the ISI
and LeT by the relatives of those who were gunned down by militants at
Mumbai’s Chabad House on November 26, 2008. An American court in
Brooklyn court has issued summons to the present and former director
generals of the ISI, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha and Lt Gen Nadeem Taj,
as well as leaders of Lashkar-e-Toiba Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and
Commander Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, while charging them with providing
material support for the 26/11 terror attacks. The lawsuit was filed
by the relatives of Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka,
who were both gunned down by militants in Mumbai.
The petitioners have also alleged that the LeT still operates training
camps in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan and openly advocated
violence against India, Israel and the United States. It names
Muridke, Manshera and Muzaffarabad as centres of training camps
operated by the LeT. It also says that Pakistani American LeT
operative David Headley, who has already pleaded guilty for his role
in the plotting of the attack, built a network of connections from
Chicago to Pakistan, undertaking these efforts at the direction and
with the material support of both LeT and the ISI. Prior to and
following each trip to Mumbai, Headley reported to and received
further instructions from both the LeT, including defendants Majid and
Maj Iqbal and the ISI, it alleges.
The lawsuit alleges that during the Mumbai attacks defendant Majid,
along with other LeT men operated from a mission control room in
Karachi, passing instructions and encouragement to the attackers via
telephone. “By reason of the foregoing, LeT, Hafiz Saeed, Zaki Lakhvi,
and others mentioned in the petition are liable to each plaintiff,
individually and as the personal representative and/or surviving
family member of their decedents, for compensatory damages in excess
of $75,000 such amount to be determined by a jury,” the lawsuit filed
in the New York Court said.
It was hardly two weeks after the filing of the law suit in against
the ISI and the LeT in New York that the Pakistani authorities have
allowed the Islamabad police to register a murder case against a
senior CIA official based in Islamabad. Many in Islamabad’s diplomatic
circles are of the view that it could be tit for tat, in a bizarre
battle of one-upmanship between the agencies. But it is hard to verify
this explanation in the absence of any official word, especially when
a US official has already stated that it was a private complaint and
does not have official baking of the American government. “It’s a free
country, and everyone has a right to go to the courts, but I don’t
think the US government will put its weight behind this private
complaint,” the official was quoted as saying on November 20, a day
after the law suit was filed in a New York court.
It was only last week that one of the cables leaked by the Wikileaks,
which was actually sent from the American embassy in Islamabad to
Washington [in February 2009]had stated quite clearly that “the
Mumbai attack of November 26, 2008, was the fruit of the ISI policy,
which still threatens a potential conflict between the two nuclear
powers”. The cache of cables reveals that the primary focus of the
Pakistan army and ISI was India and not the militancy-hit Swat region
on the Pak-Afghan border.
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