Article

2015-08-01 India-Pakistan

[DAWN] IT is said 'a picture is worth a thousand words' and in this day and age of instantly available images, transmitted in near real-time, one this week said it all: the photograph of one of the most lethal sectarian terrorism figures in the country.

Hitherto most of Malik Ishaq's videos and photos showed him with a smile, almost a mocking one, playing on his lips, surrounded by supporters, many of them armed to the teeth, and with a swagger that spoke of supreme self-confidence.

He had every reason to be chuffed and feel he was invincible. In newspaper interviews, the firebrand
...firebrands are noted more for audio volume and the quantity of spittle generated than for any actual logic in their arguments...
leader of a faction of the murderous sectarian outfit, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
(LJ), had owned up to the murders of over a hundred Shias, also having been charged with some 70 such killings at different times, but was never once convicted.

Endless stories spoke of witness intimidation, and where it didn't work, of elimination; of prosecutors being reminded of the fate of their colleagues who didn't oblige in the past and of judges browbeaten into ordering acquittals.

Where the trial was ordered in prison for safety concerns, a judge is said to have refused to preside over the proceedings after apparently receiving a phone call. In another reported incident a judge buried his face in his hands when Malik Ishaq got up and started to rattle off his children's names.

It can be said with certainty, there was state collusion in keeping this man free to carry on directing his murderous organization whether from inside prison, and he spent a decade and a half running his bloody network from behind bars, or after securing his freedom from the superior courts a few years back.

Published accounts, never contradicted by the military, have said he was flown from prison in southern Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
to the GHQ in 2009 when the military's citadel in Rawalpindi was attacked by Death Eaters and a building was taken over by them along with some hostages. He was asked to convince the leader of the holy warriors to surrender to the authorities.

He didn't succeed. The siege ended when Special Service Group commandos stormed the building, killing all of the attackers and capturing their leader alive. Usman was an army medical corps paramedic deserter and was recently executed.

Another reported incident, again not contradicted by the army, suggested Malik Ishaq was asked by former army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI...
to stop his sectarian murder campaign to which he is said to have responded: General Sahib, hum aapke bachche hein, lekin humein aisa karne ko naa kahein, jo hum nahin kar sakte. (Sir, we are like your children but please don't ask for the impossible.)

Why wouldn't such a man have huge self-confidence and an air of invincibility about him? He could literally get away with murder a hundred times over. Therefore, when he was picked up by Punjab police about a week ago for the investigation of some sectarian murders, everybody ignored the report, thinking it was one of those non-stories and he'd be freed in a few days.

Then Pakistain woke up to the startling news of his death, in what police said was a shootout with his comrades who attacked a police convoy carrying him and other LJ prisoners to free them near Muzaffargarh, sometime in the small hours of Wednesday. But till images started to circulate on the social media, many like me were finding it hard to believe the man who directly ordered or inspired hundreds of murders with impunity across the country was no more.

The most dramatic photo showed his blood-soaked corpse with bullet wounds on the tiled floor of the mortuary. His eye, frozen open in death, stared into the distance as if in disbelief at what had happened to him. His apparent disbelief was equal to what many experienced across Pakistain. The photo was clearly more eloquent than a thousand words. The reality started to sink in.

As it did, a spate of questions started to storm though many minds. Was this incident exactly as t

Posted by Fred 2015-08-01 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11 views ] Top
File under: Lashkar e-Jhangvi

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