New Delhi: Ten years after he last appeared in public, delivering a speech to thousands of frenzied followers, fugitive jihadist commander Maulana Masood Azhar Alvi is scheduled to begin directly answering questions from his followers each morning and afternoon, social media channels representing his internationally proscribed Jaish-e-Mohammed terror organisation announced Thursday.
The announcement of the celebrity-style ‘ask-me-anything’ service was made by the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Maktab-ul-Rabita, or office for communication, and comes two years after Pakistani officials claimed Azhar was living under Taliban protection in Afghanistan.
Late Thursday evening, the Maktab-ul-Rabita provided two Pakistani mobile phone numbers and said supporters of the organisation could send questions using Telegram, WhatsApp, and text messaging, which Azhar would answer each day between 9 am and 10 am, and again from 3 pm to 4 pm.
An Indian intelligence official told ThePrint the timing of the announcement suggests the Jaish-e-Mohammed was testing to see if the Government of Pakistan, which has been weakened by months of political chaos, “will feel able to act to prevent the embarrassing public rehabilitation of a notorious terrorist”.
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The missing jihadist
The Ministry of Home Affairs designated Azhar a fugitive terrorist in 2019, following a bombing in Pulwama that claimed the lives of 40 central police personnel. The designation cites, among other things, Azhar’s alleged role in organising a terrorist attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly in 2001, and the strike on Parliament House in New Delhi.
Following the Pulwama bombing, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Azhar “is in Pakistan, according to my information”.
“He is unwell to the extent that he can’t leave his house, because he’s really unwell,” the foreign minister said.
The remarks appeared to confirm claims by Punjab provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, who said that Azhar had been taken into “protective custody” following the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s 2016 attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.
Less than a year after Foreign Minister Qureshi’s assertion, though, a Gujranwala anti-terrorism court declared Azhar a proclaimed offender, after police said they were unable to find him to face trial on charges of raising funds for terrorist operations and circulating jihadist literature.
Two years ago, government sources had told Geo News that the Foreign Ministry “had written a one-page letter to the Afghan Foreign Ministry asking them to locate, report and arrest Masood Azhar, as we believe that he is hiding somewhere in Afghanistan”.
Following the disclosure of the letter, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said “Pakistani authorities have formally raised this issue with their relevant Taliban interlocutors on multiple occasions”, adding, “we have also shared documentary evidence and offered intelligence and operational assistance to locate the individual”.
The spokesperson described Azhar as a “United Nations-designated individual who is a proclaimed offender and wanted in Pakistan in numerous terrorism-related cases”. The Islamic Emirate, however, dismissed claims that Azhar was hiding on its territory.
Financial Action Task Force officials who visited Pakistan in August 2023, to monitor its compliance with counter-terrorism actions necessary to escape international sanctions, were also told he was no longer in the country. Islamabad flagged its prosecution of several lower-level Jaish-e-Mohammed members as evidence of its commitment to ending jihadist mobilisation on its soil.
Little detail has emerged on the circumstances in which Azhar might have left for Pakistan but some accounts suggested he left Bahawalpur for Kandahar in May 2022, on a visit to congratulate Taliban leaders on their victory. The scholar Abdul Basit was one of several experts who contested these claims, noting that Azhar suffered from serious renal problems, which would have made it “hard for him to survive” in Afghanistan.
Terror operations continue
Even with Azhar missing, the Jaish-e-Mohammad has continued its operations, conducting multiple terrorist attacks on Indian troops in Kashmir’s Pir Panjal mountains. ThePrint had revealed, in 2022, that the Jaish-e-Mohammed had held public events to mark the killing of its jihadists in Kashmir, with its fighters firing shots in the air at a military-style funeral near Rawalakot.
Less than a month after the FATF removed Pakistan from a list of countries at risk of sanctions because of inadequate anti-terrorism action, the Jaish-e-Mohammed also began large-scale construction work at the seminary complex in Bahawalpur, ThePrint had reported.
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