On tape: 3 Kashmiri youths escape Pakistan terror camp
SRINAGAR: Three youths from Kashmir, who had crossed over to Pakistan but made a dramatic escape last September to return home, have made startling disclosures on how Pakistan’s ISI is luring Kashmiri youngsters into joining a lesser-active terror outfit called Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen (TuM).
A videotaped interrogation of the trio by the
Indian Army, accessed by TOI, reveals that 22-year-old Mohammad Shafi Bhatt, 20-year-old Sajjad Ahmad Wani and 21-year-old Abid Ahmad Dar, all from J&K’s
Bandipora, had crossed over to Pakistan in 2017 to join a terror outfit and get arms training during the post-Burhan Wani recruitment drive to stir violence in Kashmir.
Shafi, who worked as a porter near the Jawahar post, knew the area and took his other two friends along to cross over. They exfiltrated into Pakistan from Lossar post, opposite Gurez sector in north Kashmir, on April 7, 2017.
They were received at a terror launch pad by a commander, then blindfolded and taken to a destination under the pretext that the place was a terror camp.
“We were first taken to a matchbox factory in PoK’s Muzaffarabad for five days. There were other Kashmiris in that compound too. All of them want to return but are trapped and forced to become jihadis and sent to different terror outfits,” says one of them in the videotaped interrogation. “One man came and identified himself as Ustaad. He motivated all of us to become mujahideen,” says another.
The youths were then asked their preferences about which terror group they were keen on joining. But later they were told they could join only TuM when its chief Sheikh Jameel-ur-Rehman and recruiter Hamza Bhai visited them personally.
The three youths told their interrogators that they were sent to Manshera in Muzaffarabad for a four-month training with Hizbul Mujahideen and then to Rawalpindi. They were given a monthly allowance of Rs2,000 and asked to do menial jobs. Both TuM and Hizbul,however, suspected the youths to be Indian spies for some reason. “We were tortured and that’s when we decided to run away and return to Kashmir,” one of the youths said. They also said that they met one Tauseef, another Kashmiri, who was given a weapon and some cash to infiltrate into India from Pakistan but escaped like them.
TuM was banned by the Centre on February 6 this year under Section 35 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. TuM has been involved in grenade lobbing, weapons snatching and supporting other terror outfits, such as Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), in terms of financial and logistic support.
An anti-terror specialist in Srinagar said TuM was clearly reviving itself. “They use the expertise of LeT and JeM, and the overground workers’ network of Hizbul, for big terror attacks,” he added.
The trio was intercepted and apprehended on September 8, 2018, by an Indian Army ambush party near village Tithwal. They surrendered before the Army. An FIR was lodged against them after Pakistani mobiles, SIM cards and currency were recovered from their possession. The men are now out on bail.
Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Looks like we gotta do a loooot across the LC