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Mehsud has links with ISI: report

New York: Baitullah Mehsud, chief of Pakistani Taliban who claimed credit for the recent deadly attack on a police academy near Lahore, has links with the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), said a media report.

Based in lawless border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mehsud was tipped off by ISI, to enable him escape attempts to capture or kill him in the last two years, Newsweek reported.

Several operations were launched by Pakistani security forces in the last couple of years to kill or capture Mehsud, who is also suspected to have hand in the assassination of the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, the news magazine noted.

But each time he vanished without incident.

He heads a group known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban and has made a name for himself since late 2007 as one of the militants’ most ambitious leaders, said Newsweek.

Two counter-terrorism experts familiar with official U.S. government’s reporting told the magazine that officials in both Washington and Islamabad suspect Mehsud had contacts inside the ISI.

Mehsud’s contacts, the theory goes, are tipping him off before Pakistani troops can pounce, said Newsweek.

Given Mehsud’s “odious reputation” and Pakistan’s “purported knowledge” of his whereabouts, “it’s a puzzle why they’re ignoring and avoiding any strike against him,” one tribal elder in the region told Newsweek.

The Pakistani Taliban has begun enforcing Islamic law in the Bajaur tribal region even as scores of militants consolidated their hold on Buner district, located just 100 km from the federal capital.

Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, militant commander in Bajaur Agency and a deputy of Mehsud, announced the decision to enforce Sharia during a broadcast on his illegal FM radio station on Friday.— PTI

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