New Delhi: Fresh evidence has surfaced that the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) is engaged in large-scale construction work at its sprawling Jama-e-Masjid Subhanallah headquarters in Bahawalpur, less than a month after the multinational Financial Action Task Force (FATF) removed Pakistan from a watchlist of countries where anti-terrorism laws and money-laundering activities were considered inadequate.
Video and photographs obtained by ThePrint show JeM has begun earthworks on several acres of land next to the boundary of the headquarters complex, which was acquired earlier this year. The existing complex houses a mosque, and a seminary where several hundred children study.
The land, documents available to ThePrint reveal, was sold earlier this year to Abdul Rauf Ashgar, the brother of JeM chief Masood Azhar Alvi. The documents show Asghar began purchasing several acres of land from March 2008 for the construction of the headquarters complex.
Following the 2019 suicide-bomb attack in Pulwama, for which JeM had taken responsibility, Pakistan had announced that it was taking over the administration of the organisation’s headquarters. Later, however, Bahawalpur deputy commissioner Shahzaib Saeed told visiting journalists it was just a “routine seminary having no links with the Jaish-e-Mohammed”.
The land records, though, make it clear that the headquarters was owned by Rauf, who was designated a terrorist by the United States in 2010 for his role in “deadly attacks against innocent civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India”.
The JeM house journal Al-Qalam, in its 9 February, 2017, issue, had also identified Rauf as “general of the Jaish-e-Mohammed”.
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Removal from FATF watchlist
Earlier this year, in a measure designed to facilitate its removal from the FATF watch-list, Pakistan had written to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, asking it to locate and arrest Masood Azhar. Islamabad also arrested several members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba on terrorism-related charges, including 26/11 perpetrator Sajid Mir.
The measures were part of a series of measures taken by Pakistan, ahead of a visit by FATF investigators in August.
According to Pakistan’s counter-terrorism authority, the Jaish has been proscribed since 2002, along with the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The ban was imposed after the 2001 attack on Parliament House in New Delhi.
But fighters of JeM are known to have remained active in the region, with United Nations Security Council monitors reporting in May that the jihadist group “maintains eight training camps in Nangarhar, three of which are directly under Taliban control”.
The JeM chief for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Muhammad Illyas, also held a memorial meeting for a jihadist killed in Kashmir early this year at Jaloth near Rawalakot. Fighters of the JeM fired shots in the air and shouted pro-jihad slogans to commemorate Arsalan’s death, a video obtained by ThePrint revealed.
In his speech, Arslan asserted that JeM was responsible for a 13 December, 2021, ambush on a police bus near Srinagar’s Pantha Chowk, which claimed the lives of three police personnel and left 11 injured.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
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