Islamabad, June 19: Denying that Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) founder Maulana Masood Azhar has been placed under house arrest in Bahawalpur, Pakistani authorities have said his whereabouts are unknown and he might have fled to the Waziristan region. But some intelligence officials believe that Azhar could be living under the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Following the June 17 arrest of five JeM activists from Punjab’s Sialkot district, there were rumours that among them was Azhar, whom the Indian government wants extradited.
But Pakistani intelligence sources say a consensus exists in the establishment that Azhar should not be handed over to India under any circumstances.
The sources said the official stance of the Pakistani government remains that Azhar has abandoned his Bahawalpur headquarters and is at large. They did not rule out the possibility of the JeM chief’s moving to some ISI safe house in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.
The sources said that earlier this month, Indian efforts in the United Nations to place sanctions on Azhar received a major setback, after London surprisingly joined hands with Beijing to block Delhi’s request for proscribing the JeM chief under the United Nations’s Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions resolution No 1267 — Britain and China had been persuaded by the Pakistan government to do so.
India had wanted Azhar to be included in the sanctions list just as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its head Hafiz Mohammed Saeed along with other LeT operatives were proscribed after 26/11.
–Agencies