Terrorist Masood Azhar appeared at funeral rites for family members in Bahawalpur, eyewitnesses say
The eyewitnesses said those buried in Bahawalpur did not include Abdul Rauf Azhar, Masood Azhar's brother and the military chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammed. Though there has been no official confirmation, multiple sources have said Rauf died in the air strikes.
New Delhi: Maulana Masood Azhar Alvi, the fugitive head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, made a brief appearance at state funerals held Thursday for family members killed in air strikes by India at its seminary in Bahawalpur, two sources present at the event said. The commanding officer of the XXXI corps headquartered in the city, Lieutenant-General Saqib Mehmood Malik, and senior officers of the Pakistan Rangers' border guards, were also in attendance.
An internationally-designated terrorist, Rauf is alleged to have been involved in the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814, and the gruesome 2002 murder of Daniel Pearl, an American journalist who worked for the Wall Street Journal.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto had announced in 2022 that Masood Azhar escaped to Afghanistan ahead of an attempt by Pakistani authorities to declare him a proclaimed offender. The declaration was made even as Pakistan mounted a successful effort to be removed from a terror finance watchlist maintained by the multinational Financial Action Task Force. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan denied Pakistan's claim.
Earlier, Pakistan had said it had placed Azhar in protective custody, following India's 2019 air strike targeting his seminary at Balakot, in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Twenty-two people were buried in coffins draped in Pakistan's national flag at the funeral, the sources said, with honours normally observed only at state funerals. The victims included Azhar's eldest sister, Baji Zahra, who remained in a section of the mosque reserved for women even after most others had evacuated the building in the days before the strike, one of the two sources said. Two of Azhar's nieces, who were studying at the seminary, were killed along with her.
Large numbers of seminaries had been closed and evacuated on 1 May, a week before India's strikes, as fears mounted of military attacks, local authorities had announced. The mosque in Bahawalpur was also emptied of its students, the sources said, except for a caretaker, his family, and a handful of women students.
An Indian intelligence source said there was credible intelligence that four top personnel of the Jaish-e-Mohammed had been killed, but said confirmation of their identities had not yet been obtained.
Even though Pakistani authorities had announced that they had taken administrative control of the complex in 2019, the Jaish-e-Mohammed has erected new buildings since, and posts armed guards to prevent unauthorised entry.
Azhar also made an appearance at the seminary in December, when he delivered a speech at the Bahawalpur mosque to mark the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924.
'Fearful rulers who do not believe in the word of Allah and jihad have led us to defeat in Kashmir, Palestine and other Muslim lands,' Azhar said in the speech, which includes several explicit calls for transnational violence. 'They say nothing can change, and America will rule the world.'
'Tell me, are there not even 300 people who can fight to reclaim my Babri Masjid?…We will send you all to Kashmir with such powerful guns that all the television anchors will quiver, and ask where these weapons have come from,' he had said at the event.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
Also Read: Operation Sindoor brings Daniel Pearl back in focus. How slain WSJ journalist's father reacted
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