ISLAMABAD - Former interior minister Rehman Malik on Thursday asked the government to place names of five Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan militants on the exit control list.
The TTP militants were allegedly involved in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto who had recently been granted bail by a court. Speaking to journalists, Malik said that the five terrorists were declared guilty of murdering Benazir Bhutto by the Joint Investigation Team of the Federal Investigation Agency and the Pakistan People’s Party felt that justice was denied.
Malik demanded to immediately place the names of Abdul Rashid, Aitzaz Shah, Rafaqat Hussain, Husnain Gul and Sher Zaman on the ECL to stop them from fleeing the country.
Reading out his letter to Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, he reiterated his demanded to make a request to President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani to deport Ikramullah, the surviving suicide bomber and the writer of the book “Inqilab Mahsood- South Waziristan” Abu Mansoor Asim Mufti Noor Wali, who were hiding in Afghanistan.
He believed that their interrogation will further expose the facts of the conspiracy behind the assassination of Bhutto. Malik said on January 30, he wrote a letter to the interior minister demanding him to take up the matter of deportation of Ikramullah and Abu Mansoor with the Afghanistan government but no action had so far been taken in this regard by the government of Pakistan which compelled him to send him a reminder.
He expressed grave concerns over their release and condemned it strongly. He said the confessions of these recently-released accused persons were substantiated by an independent forensic evidence to prove their criminal act in the court of law including the DNA of the joggers used by the suicide bomber, recovered from the house of one of the accused persons.