The DG ISPR, Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar, has said that the officers responsible for the escape of former Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehasanullah Ehsan have been acted against, and efforts to arrest him are being made afresh. Ehsan managed to escape last year after three tears in custody, from the Islamabad safe house where he was being kept, by the simple expedient of going out of the house and catching a taxi. Where he got his family, where he got travel documents, is not known, but then he turned up in Turkey. He dropped out of sight there, until his recent tweets threatening Malala Yousufzai, who had complained to the Pakistani military about this Her 2012 shooting, and the 2014 APS attack, are the highlights of the acts of terrorism Mr Ehsan confessed to being involved in after his capture in 2017.
General Iftikhar may reflect international concern about the threats Ms Yousafzai has received, At the time of Mr Ehsan’s escape, the Interior Minister was Brigadier (retd) Ejaz Shah, the Musharraf-era DG Intelligence Bureau, and at the time, there was widespread amazement that on his watch it transpired that such a high-profile prisoner should manage to escape, and that too in such a simple manner. Mr Ehsan’s tweets and audio recordings upon his escape had created the patently false image of a serious dereliction of duty by agencies. It further boggles the mind that it is beyond them to find out where Mr Ehsan had disappeared too after his last sighting almost a year ago.
This raises the question of whether the agencies are more focused on its real task of intelligence gathering or on those that a well outside their mandated role. It would be more purposeful if it would focus on maintaining security and on finding out information that would allow General Iftikhar to come good on his claim that Mr Ehsan would be arrested again, though it is still not clear how someone outside the country could be arrested.
