Sources confirmKandahar hijackmastermind killedin May 7 strike

 

 

 

 

 

Armed Forces launcheda strike on May 7, targeting nineterror infrastructure sites inPakistan and Pakistan OccupiedKashmir (PoK) under OperationSindoor. The operation resultedin the elimination of key terroroperatives, includingMohammad Yusuf Azhar, thebrother-in-law of Jaish-eMohammad chief Masood Azhar, according to sources. According to sources, Yusuf Azhar, a key member of the proscribed terrorist organisationJaish-e-Mohammad (J eM), wasresponsible for handlingweapons training for JeM operatives and was involved in multiple terrorist attacks in Jammu& Kashmir. Azhar was also involved in theconspiracy to hijack IndianAirlines aircraft IC-814 fromKathmandu (Nepal) to Delhi. ARed Corner notice number A565/6-2000 was issued against him. Judea Pearl, father of JewishAmerican Journalist Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded on camera in2002 by terrorists, clarifiedreports of Azhar’s death and hisconnection to his son’s murder. ‘I want to thank all of you whoreached out to me today inresponse to the news that India’smilitary forces have eliminatedAbdul Rauf Azhar, a mandescribed as ‘responsible for thekidnapping and murder of myson, Daniel.’ I want to clarify:

 

Azhar was a Pakistani extremist and leader of the terroristorganization Jaish-eMohammed. While his group wasnotdirectlyinvolvedin the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated thehijacking that led to the release of Omar Sheikh, the man who lured Danny into captivity. Sheikh was later sentenced to death but ultimately released from prison and kept in a ‘GovernmentSafeHouse’,’Pearl said in a post on X. Former Journalist and colleague of Daniel Pearl at USbasedWall Street Journal, Asra Nomani, hailed India’s recent Operation Sindoor in Bahawalpur, which she revealed the place used by Pakistan for its ‘home-grown terrorists’. In a post on X, Nomani said that when

 

India started its actionagainstPakistan,shehad only one city’s name that was Bahawalpur. ‘I still have chills in my heart from whenIfirst heard that town’s name in late January 2002. For the 23 years since, I have reportedonhowPakistani intelligence and military leaders have used that city, Bahawalpur, in the southern province of Punjab as a base for its homegrown domestic terrorists. When I heard India bombed training camps in Pakistan thisweekinOperation Sindoor, in response to a Pakistani terrorist rampage in India’sKashmir State,Ihadone city’s name on my lips: Bahawalpur,’ she said. ‘My friend, WSJ reporter Danny Pearl, went to BahawalpurinDecember 2001 with a notebook and a pen. Gen.PervezMusharrafhadjust promisedhewasshuttingdown Pakistan’smilitant groups after a strike by Pakistan’s terrorists against theParliamentinIndia, andDannyreportedon themilitant officesinBahawalpur. He literally knocked on their doors,’ Nomani recalled. Asra Nomani further mentioned that the militant training camps were open for business in Bahawalpur.

 

‘On January 23, 2002,Danny left a home I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan, for an interview. Ilearned thatDanny’s fixer, Asif Farooqi, had arranged aninterview forDanny through amannamed‘Arif.’Dannydidn’t know it but Arif was the PR man for a militant group, Harkutul Mujahadeen. What was Arif’s hometown? Bahawalpur. The police launchedamanhunt to find ArifinBahawalpur.Welearned Arif’s family faked a funeral for Arif.Police found him trying to boardabus in Muzaffarabad, across thecountrybyPakistan’s border with Kashmir. It is another town India said it bombed terrorist training facilities,’ the Journalist said. Asra Nomani recalled that Danielwashandedoff toOmar Sheikh, a British-Pakistani dropout from the London School of Economics, radicalised in the 1990s in London mosques. ‘OmarSheikhwas freedwith Pakistani terrorist leader Masood Azhar, whose family was allegedly killed this week by India’s air strike in Bahawalpur. Did Pakistan jail Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar when they returned to Pakistan with a third terrorist, freed from India’s jails? No. Pakistan’s military and intelligence gave them safe passage. They used them as weapons against India. But in fact these domestic terroristshavewaged war against innocents in Pakistan, like civil society activists, Benazir Bhutto, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, schoolchildren and countlessothers,’Nomanisaid. ‘Their extremismhas ruined Pakistan, and Pakistanis can’t blameAmerica forcreating the mujahideen to fight theSoviets in the 1980s,’ she asserted.