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| Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar captured |
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Confirms Baitullah’s death in US drone attack
By Mushtaq Yusufzai, Shah Nawaz & Shakirullah
PESHAWAR/GHALLANAI: A tribal Lashkar in Khwezai area of Mohmand Agency captured and handed over to security forces a top militant commander and spokesman for the defunct Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Maulvi Omar.
Omar was also deputy to Bajaur Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, engaged in fighting against security forces since August 6, 2008. He used to sell perfumes in a pushcart in the Inayat Killay Bazaar in Bajaur in the past. He, at one stage, studied and taught in a Madrassa.
In recent weeks, the TTP had appointed another spokesman named Azam Tariq, though Maulvi Omar insisted that he hadn’t been replaced. A senior military official told The News that the TTP spokesman during preliminary interrogation confirmed the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack on August 5 on the house his father-in-law, Ikramuddin, in Zangara village in South Waziristan tribal region.
According to an official of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC), Maulvi Omar and his two bodyguards were returning to Bajaur after a failed attempt to travel to the Orakzai Agency when armed volunteers of the local tribal Lashkar in Khwezai area in Mohmand Agency captured them.
Maulvi Omar, the official said, was scheduled to attend an important meeting of senior TTP commanders in Orakzai. After his arrest, Maulvi Omar told his interrogators that he was on his way to Orakzai Agency, but returned from the border between Khyber and Mohmand tribal regions due to strict security arrangements made by the FC and volunteers of the Lashkar.
Maulvi Omar and his two colleagues, identified as Hanifullah and Waheed Gul, were walking on foot when members of the Lashkar waylaid and seized them. They later handed them over to the Mohmand Rifles, a wing of the FC. The TTP spokesman was then shifted to Ghallanai, the headquarters of the Mohmand Agency, where he was to be produced before the media.
A large number of media people, particularly reporters of television channels reached Ghallanai for coverage of this unusual event. However, after hours of wait outside the gate of Mohmand Rifles headquarters in Ghallanai, the journalists were finally told that the event had been cancelled on the directives of senior military officials in Peshawar and Islamabad.
Maulvi Omar, whose real name is Said Muhammad, was later shifted to Peshawar in a military helicopter for further interrogation. Sources in Khwezai tribal Lashkar said the TTP letterheads signed by Baitullah Mehsud, maps, video camera and a walkie-talkie were recovered from him at the time of his arrest. It is worth mentioning here that a commander of this Lashkar, Malik Ajmal, was recently killed by the Taliban and now his brother Fayyaz had taken his place.
Military sources said he had been handed over to a joint intelligence team comprising the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Military Intelligence (MI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials for interrogation.
An official close to the interrogation process said the TTP spokesman had confirmed the killing of Baitullah Mehsud in a drone attack.However, the official added that the authorities would wait for more evidence to verify Baitullah’s death.
Since assuming the charge of central TTP spokesman, Maulvi Omar was in touch with media people even during tough times following military operations.As the TTP spokesman, he would take responsibility for each and every terrorist attack in and outside Pakistan. On the occasion, he made outlandish claims. Some of his statements can land him in serious trouble if he is tried in a court.
Besides causing damage to precious public and private properties, hundreds of people, civilians and personnel from armed forces lost their lives in countless attacks that were claimed by Maulvi Omar.
Taliban sources said he developed close contacts with Arab fighters when a large number of Arab militants fled Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. He was seriously injured in the first US drone attack in Damadola in Bajaur on Jan 13, 2006, where the US officials claimed al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri had been invited to dinner. His two daughters were reportedly married to Arab fighters, one of whom, Sheikh Usman, was killed in another US drone attack in Bajaur in October 2008.
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