KARACHI, July 31: Qari Saifullah Akhtar, who was arrested in February on the suspicion of involvement in the twin suicide bombings on Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming procession on Oct 18 last year, was picked up and subsequently released by intelligence agencies on at least three earlier occasions, says a report compiled by a joint interrogation team.
Intelligence agency operatives arrested Qari Saifullah from Lahore and he was grilled by a joint interrogation team comprised of operatives from the police, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Special Investigation Group of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the Rangers’ F.S. Wing. However, they failed to find any proof of the detained man’s involvement in the Karsaz blasts and the court has already ordered Saifullah’s release for what is being described as the lack of evidence. He is currently being held under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance.
According to the joint interrogation team’s report, a copy of which was obtained by Dawn, Qari Saifullah studied at the Jamia Binoria at New Town in 1979 when he and Maulana Irshad Ahmed decided that it was time to wage jihad as well as prepare others for it, and that they should go to Afghanistan for this purpose. In the years that followed, Saifullah crossed the Durand line so many times that even the report of his interrogation fails to give an exact number for his visits.
Over the course of a nearly 30-year-long involvement in alleged militant Islamic activities, Saifullah became the Ameer of the Afghanistan-based Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami and procured weapons, reportedly, on behalf of a brigadier in the Pakistan Army who promised Saifullah support in enforcing an ‘Islamic’ system in Pakistan and enlisted his support in a plot to overthrow the then civilian government.
Amongst the people whom Saifullah claims to have met in the later part of his career are retired General Hameed Gul, former Jaish-e-Mohammad commander Shaukat Hayat and Taliban leader Maulana Abdul Jaleel.
Journey to Afghanistan and jihad
There is little in Qari Saifullah’s early years to indicate the course his life would eventually take. Born in 1959 in Chak 46, Fateh Mandi Chistian in the Bahawalnagar district, Saifullah studied the Quran from a mosque located at Dharnawala Mor. His deceased father had had land holdings and Saifullah was admitted in Class III in the government high school in Mandi Chistian but abandoned education after passing the mid-school level examinations in 1977.
In 1979, Saifullah was studying at the Jamia Binoria in New Town when he and Maulana Irshad Ahmed decided to go to Afghanistan to wage ‘jihad’.
Later, whilst studying for a Dars-i-Nizami course in the Jamia Rashidia Sahiwal, Saifullah crossed the Durand line again in 1981 to go to Lagon. He was accompanied by his associate’s commander Khalid Zubair – who is described in the interrogation team’s report as ‘shaheed’ – commander Nasrullah Mansoor Langrial who is currently jailed in India, and Maulvi Maqbool Ahmed.
During this stint in Afghanistan, Saifullah joined the jihadi organisation Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami in 1982. Later that year, he and some associates crossed into Pakistan to receive two months’ weaponry training in the Harkat-ul-Inqlab Islami training camp in the Jamrud Khyber Agency, after which they returned to Afghanistan.
By 1984, Saifullah and his associates had started taking part in skirmishes, during one of which Saifullah was injured. For two months, he underwent treatment at the Charsadda Hospital on Kohat Road, subsequent to which he returned home.
Raising funds from Arab countries
After completing the Dars-i-Nizami course upon which he had embarked three years earlier, Saifullah went on his own to Argun, Afghanistan, in 1984 where he participated in physical training exercises and found the occasional opportunity to go to the war front. He became the deputy of the then Ameer of the Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami, Maulana Irshad Ahmed, and upon the latter’s death in 1985/86, Saifullah was made the ameer of the organisation. In this capacity, it was his responsibility to arrange food and board for the Mujahideen and depute them to the war. The organisation was new at the time and had few associates, so Saifullah’s deployment of Mujahideen was not on a large scale.
At the same time, however, the Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami’s then central commander, Maulana Fazal-ul-Rahman Khalil, became annoyed over not being consulted about Qari Saifullah’s elevation to the status of ameer and stopped working for the organisation. Soon afterwards, in late 1986, Khalil formed a separate jihadi organisation called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Meanwhile, Qari Saifullah went to Saudi Arabia and after performing Umra, visited the office of the Rabita Aalam-e-Islami in Makkah and met its secretary, Abdullah Umer. He informed Umer about the Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami’s activities and requested funds for its support.
According to the joint investigation team’s report, Abdullah Umer assured Saifullah of all kinds of help and gave him letters requesting religious ministries in Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain for financial help for the Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami. Saifullah carried these letters across, as a result of which the Bahrain religious ministry donated $2,000 while its counterpart in Dubai refused to provide any assistance.
After gathering funds in this way from Arab countries, Saifullah went to London with Maulana Naserullah Mansoor to participate in the International Khatm-i-Nabuwat Conference. Afterwards, he returned to Pakistan via Saudi Arabia, where he had performed Hajj.
In pursuit of an ‘Islamic’ system
In March 1995, when Qari Saifullah lived in Islamabad, he was visited by an old jihadi associate, Bilal, from Balochistan. Bilal said that his cousin Mustansar Billah, who was a brigadier with the Pakistan Army and was posted in Quetta, was an active and rigid supporter of the ‘Islamists’ and wanted to meet Saifullah.
A week later, Saifullah travelled to Quetta and met Brig Mustansar at the latter’s house. During the detailed discussion, the brigadier said that he was making efforts towards establishing an ‘Islamic’ system of government in Pakistan, for which Saifullah’s help was needed.
Two or three months after this first meeting, some time in June or July 1995, Saifullah met with Brig Mustansar at the GHQ Rawalpindi. The brigadier said that along with other army officers, he was trying to bring about an Islamic system of government in Pakistan but their efforts were not producing the desired results, and that perhaps the answer lay in martial law. He said that he needed the cooperation of all the country’s religious organisations towards this end, and asked for Qari Saifullah’s help.
Saifullah asked whether Brig Mustansar had the power required to impose martial law in the country, who replied that though he did not himself have the required powers, an officer of the rank of major-general was with him. The brigadier added that his plan had to be implemented within a short time because he was due to retire soon.
Convinced of the army officer’s sincerity towards religion, Saifullah promised all kinds of aid and was asked by Brig Mustansar to arrange weapons, commando uniforms and army boots. Saifullah pointed out that the officer could procure these items more easily since he had access to numerous resources, but the brigadier said that he could not remove weapons from the army store. Saifullah countered by saying that he [Saifullah] was well-known to almost all the personnel of the intelligence agencies, and that they would soon find out if Saifullah went arms shopping in Darra Adam Khel.
However, Brig Mustansar insisted that he could trust no one but Qari Saifullah, who then agreed to purchase the weapons.
Purchase of weapons and arrests
Saifullah told the joint investigation team that Brig Mustansar gave him Rs700,000 in cash, with which he purchased 15 commando uniforms and pairs of boots from Rawalpindi’s Saddar Bazaar to hand over to the army officer.
Later in 1995, Saifullah went to Darra Adam Khel in Kohat where he bought 15 AK-47s, two rocket launchers and five pistols from the shop of a certain ‘Langra’ in Darra Bazaar. He asked how far Langra could transport the weapons, who promised to have them delivered in Kohat city.
After arranging for a place to store the weapons at Kohat’s Tal Road, Saifullah returned to Islamabad. He went to Brig Mustansar’s house on Rawalpindi’s Airport Road to tell him when the weapons would be delivered in Kohat, and the army officer said that he would subsequently collect the weapons from the spot.
However, Customs’ officials managed to arrest the drivers of both of the vans in which the weapons were being transported, and recovered the arms. Qari Saifullah was arrested soon afterwards but he told investigators that the weapons had been purchased for jihad in Kashmir.
The joint investigation team’s report said that Saifullah was kept by personnel of the intelligence agencies in army barracks in the Cantonment area, and that he was questioned but not tortured.
The report added that when the plot to overthrow the government was later revealed, about a hundred army officers were arrested amongst whom were Major-General Zahir-ul-Islam Abbasi, Brigadier Mustansar Billah, Colonel Raja Liaquat and Colonel Inayat.
In the subsequent investigation, some of the arrested officers were declared innocent while others became state witnesses. The hearings of this trial stretched over a month during which army authorities tried to make Saifullah turn approver. However, he refused to do so since no witness was available to testify against him and his involvement had apparently been limited to the purchase of weaponry.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered Saifullah’s release after a petition was filed by his brother, Abdul Rehman Mehmood.
Later, intelligence agency operatives arrested Saifullah again when he was coming out of the Islamabad offices of the Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami. He told the interrogators that he had no link with the Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami or its activities and that he had a separate organisation. On this occasion, Saifullah was released after a three-month-long period of detention.
Post 9/11 flight and Oct 18 suspicions
After the US invasion of Afghanistan in wake of the events of 9/11, large-scale arrests of activists belonging to Al Qaeda or other jihadi organisations were undertaken in Pakistan. Qari Saifullah and Haji Munir went to Dubai in 2002 but the latter returned to Pakistan over a year later, upon which he was arrested.
Haji Munir provided information that led to Saifullah’s third arrest, this time by local agencies in Dubai. After keeping him in confinement for 18 days, they sent Saifullah to Islamabad and he was arrested upon landing by operatives of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. He was grilled for four days about alleged links to Al Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but he maintained that he had no links with these organisations. After a period of confinement, Saifullah was taken to Chakwal Mor on the night of May 27 last year, and released.
Upon his release, Saifullah went to Masjid-ul-Huda lane in Lahore’s Hamza Town to meet his pir, Syed Nafees Shah, who ordered him to stay in the Khanqah and work for the spiritual guidance of the people.
Whilst there, Saifullah telephoned Brig Mustansar and asked him to meet after Friday prayers in the Masjid of Hafiz Saeed, located at Scheme Mor, Ittehad Colony. However, the army officer did not show up. Subsequently, Saifullah obtained the brigadier’s address and went to see him. During the meeting, the army officer said that he was writing an explanatory commentary [Tafseer] on the Quran as well as a book in which Saifullah was mentioned.
The next time Saifullah contacted Brig Mustansar, by telephone, the officer claimed to be in Peshawar and told Saifullah not to call him again.
According to the joint investigation team’s report, other people with whom Qari Saifullah later met included retired General Hameed Gul, former Jaish-i-Mohammed commander Shaukat Hayat and Taliban leader Maulana Abdul Jaleel. Saifullah told the interrogators that his pir-o-murshid, Hazrat Nafees Shah, died in February this year.
Qari Saifullah was picked up and carried away blind-folded on the night of Feb 26 by operatives of an intelligence agency who, he claimed, had been dressed in white clothes. After having been interrogated for suspected involvement with the Oct 18 attacks on Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming procession, Saifullah’s release on the grounds of the lack of evidence has already been ordered by the court.
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