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March 29, 2006

Pakistan: Islamist Leader Beaten, In Critical Condition

The BBC and AKI today report that in Pakistan, the leader of the Islamist terror group Harkatul Mujahideen, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman Khalil, or Fazal Rehman Khalil (pictured), has been beaten badly and his body dumped outside a mosque in an Islamabad suburb.

A spokesman for the group, Sultan Zia, said that Khalil had been taken from a mosque in Tarnol, three miles outside Islamabad, during evening prayers.

Reuters was told: "They badly thrashed him and his driver with rifle butts and they have serious head injuries. At the moment, doctors are not letting us see Maulana because of his critical condition."

Now, Khalil is in hospital in Rawalpindi.

Harkatul Mujahideen has its own website, where Mufti Khubaib Sahib has "inspiring essays" such as one where moderate Muslims are described thus: "To them slaughtering of the inner devil is vital, but they regard the slaughtering of the enemies of Allah Ta`ala, disdainful. This limited and narrow approach to the Religious teachings and practices, turn them away from other essential and important Teachings of Islam."

The group is involved mainly with the Islamist operations in the disputed regions of Kashmir. On January 1 we wrote that a leader of the group, Ghulam Qadir Mughal, was killed in a shoot-out with Indian soldiers in Kashmir.

The young British terrorist Shehzad Tanweer, who was one of the bombers who killed 52 people in London on 7 July 2005, had learned explosives handling at a training camp run by Harkatul Mujahideen. The camp was at Manshera in Pakistan, close to the Kashmir border.

Harkatul Mujahideen, according to Global Security was originally named Harakat al-Ansar. It is based in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan.

Khalil is an associate of Bin Laden. He signed bin Laden's February 1998 fatwa, which authorised attacks against the US and Western interests. He is also linked with the Taliban. When the US launched its offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Khalil went into hiding in October, 2001.

In 1991, he had led a group which defeated the communist army in Khost, southern Afghanistan, in 1991.

After founding his Harkatul-Ansar in 1980, in 1985 the group had a split in opinions, and Maulana Masood Azhar went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Khalil renamed his group Harkatul Mujahideen, or "Movement of the Holy Warrior".

Harkatul Mujahideen was banned in Pakistan by President Pervez Musharraf in 2001. It had been designated as a terror organisation by the US State Department in 1994.

In recent years, Khalil has been arrested on three occasions by Pakistani security forces, but on each occasion, he had subsequently been released. According to AKI, he was under suspicion recently of involvement with his ties to Taliban fighters in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, close to the Afhanistan border.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 29, 2006 1:53 PM

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