US says Masood Azhar given safe haven in Pak

NEWDELHI: Pakistan is still a “safe harbour” for terror groups focused on the region and it continues to allow organisations that target India and Afghanistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Haqqani Network (HQN), to operate from its soil, a new US report said on Wednesday. The US State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2019 said Pakistan has failed to act against known terrorists such as UN-designated JeM founder Masood Azhar and 2008 Mumbai attacks “project manager” Sajid Mir, both of whom are “believed to remain free” in the country. The report said

Pakistan “remained a safe harbour for… regionally focused terrorist groups”.

Though Pakistan’s National Action Plan for countering terrorism calls to “ensure that no armed militias are allowed to function in the country”, several terror groups that focus on attacks outside the country “continued to operate from Pakistani soil in 2019”, the report said.

WASHINGTON: The United States said on Wednesday that Jaish-e-Mohammad founder Masood Azhar and 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Sajid Mir were “widely believed” to be living “under the protection of the state” in Pakistan, which has still not taken “decisive actions” against terrorists based on its soil.

The United States has pushed Pakistan for long through threats and appeals to arrest and prosecute terrorists sheltered there and in the state department’s 2019 country reports on terrorism released on Wednesday, it welcomed the prosecution of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-eTaiba, in 2019, along with 12 associates.

But the report added that Pakistan has made “no effort to use domestic authorities to prosecute” other terrorist figures such as Azhar and Mir, “both of whom are widely believed to reside in Pakistan under the protection of the state, despite government denials”.

It marked a rare instance of the US directly accusing Pakistan of looking the other way as these two terrorists have lived and thrived there. Washington has also accused Islamabad of providing them state protection.

Jaish-e-Mohammad had claimed responsibility for the terror attack in Pulwama in February 2019.

The US has been generally critical of Pakistan for years for allowing terrorists to take shelter on its soil. America has also said in the past that the Haqqani Network, of the Afghan Taliban, was a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.

But accusing Pakistan of providing state protection to Azhar and Mir is an unusual stance.

“The United States has known of the presence in Pakistan of jihadi leaders who operate in India and Afghanistan, but wants to keep its channel of communication open with Pakistan, which is why it has not used the kind of firm language that it uses about other countries,” said Husain Haqqani, the former US ambassador to Pakistan who now lives in the US.