Islamabad: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan, who was responsible for the terror attacks on Malala Yousafzai and the Peshawar Army school, has escaped from an Army jail in Pakistan.
In an audio recording released on Thursday and shared via an online private messaging platform, Ehsanullah claimed that he had succeeded in escaping from jail on January 11.
Ehsanullah, also the spokesperson of another dreaded group Jamaat ul Abrar, is responsible for several terror attacks in Pakistan and had a bounty of $ 1 million on his head.
In 2012, he was involved in the attack on Malala, who later became a Nobel laureate for peace. She was shot in the head for defying Taliban diktats and pursuing her education and highlighting atrocities of the militant outfit.
He is also a prime accused in the 2014 Army Public School (APS) attack in Peshawar in which 134 school children and 15 staff members were killed.
He was also involved in the suicide bombing of Shiites in Rawalpindi and Karachi, killing of nine foreign tourists and their guide in Gilgit-Baltistan area, twin blasts targeting peace committee volunteers in Mohmand agency, suicide attack near the Wagah border and the 2016 bombing of an Easter gathering in a Lahore park that killed at least 75 people and injured more than 300 others.
In 2017, he surrendered before the Pakistan Army under “mysterious circumstances”. Soon after his surrender, a Pakistani TV channel was allowed to interview Ehsanullah who at the time claimed that he was working for India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). However, after three years in custody, the Pakistani Army was yet to file a charge-sheet against him, sources in Islamabad said.
The sources confirmed that the audio clipping was Ehsanullah’s voice. Speaking in Urdu, Ehsanullah claimed that he had followed the law in the last three years, but Pakistan’s dishonest and corrupt institutions had deceived him and his family.
He said he had been forced to give statements, alluding to the TV news interview, under an agreement between him and Pakistani authorities, but none of the promises were kept.
Ehsanullah also said that he would soon expose all the officials who were involved in the conspiracy against him.