Dawn: Reports based on communication intercepts from 2010 to 2012 and other intelligence in classified documents available with the Washington Post indicate that officials in Pakistan’s security apparatus weren’t only targeting suspected insurgents when it came to extra-judicial action and that there was in deed a plot in the works to “eliminate” prominent rights activist Asma Jahangir.
According to the summary of a top-secret Defence Intelligence Agency (report), US intelligence agencies had in May 2012 discovered evidence of Pakistani officers plotting to kill Jahangir.
The DIA report did not identify which officers were plotting the attack against the activist, but said the plan “included either tasking militants to kill her in India or tasking militants or criminals to kill her in Pakistan”.
The US agency said it did not know whether the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of which Jahangir has been a leading public critic, had approved for the plot to proceed. And although, the report speculated that the ISI was motivated to kill Jahangir “to quiet public criticism of the military,” the agency noted that such a plot “would result in international and domestic backlash as ISI is already under significant criticism for intimidation and extra-judicial killings”.
Categories: Asia