Former Pakistan president General Pervez Musharraf, in an interview, said that Masood Azhar-led Jaish-e-Mohammad was being used by Pakistan’s intelligence to carry out attacks in India during his tenure and hence he did not “insist” on taking strict against the banned militant group.
JeM has claimed responsibility for the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama which killed over 40 CRPF jawans on 14 February.
In a telephonic interview to a Pakistan-based news channel, Musharraf welcomed the action taken against Masood Azhar’s son and his terror organisation and said that it was JeM which had carried out an assassination attempt on him when he was the President of Pakistan.
In a 2-minute clip of the interview, tweeted out by the interviewee Nadeem Malik on 5 March, Musharraf is heard saying, “This is a good move. I have always said that the JeM is a terrorist organisation. They had even attempted to assassinate me in a suicide attack. Action should be taken against them. I am happy the government is taking a tough stand against them.”
Musharraf had survived two assassination attempts during his tenure. The one he is blaming JeM for dates back to 2003 when a suicide bomber had attempted to blow him up at Jhanda Chichi in Rawalpindi. Recalling the incident, Musharraf says he was fortunate to have survived the attack due to a delay by the bomber in pressing the button.
Pak Was Using JeM to Carry Out Bombings in India, Hence Did Not Insist on Taking Action: Musharraf
When asked why he himself did not take any action against JeM when he was in power, Musharraf suggested that he did not want to “insist” since Pakistan intelligence agencies were using the terror outfit to carry out bombings in India.
Those were different times. Our intelligence men were involved in a tit-for-tat between India and Pakistan. They were conducting bomb blasts in Pakistan and we were getting it done there (in India). This was continuing at that time and amid all of this, no major action was taken against the Jaish. And I also did not insist.Pervez Musharraf
On Tuesday, 5 March, Pakistan took Azhar's son, his brother and 44 members of the banned militant outfits into "preventive detention", amid mounting pressure from the global community on it to rein in the terror groups operating on its soil.
India last week handed over the dossier to Pakistan to take action against the JeM, as pressure mounted on Islamabad to take action against individual and organisation listed by the UN Security Council as terrorists.
Pakistan, on Wednesday, 6 March, intensified its ongoing crackdown against the banned organisations and took control of several seminaries and assets belonging to Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its wing Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation.
The confiscation of properties of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) comes after Pakistan formally placed the proscribed organisations in the list of banned organisations on Tuesday.
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