Finally US wakes up, names ISI as a terrorist organization

London, April 25: They may not say it openly lest their 'ally in the war against war-terror', gets offended but a latest report states that authorities in the United States describe Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as a terrorist organisation. What more, they even reckon it as much a threat as the al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

According to the documents obtained and published by The Guardian, US interrogators in Guantenamo Bay have felt the links between ISI and various terrorost organisations and have been quoted as saying, "Being linked to any of these groups(al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah) is an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity."

According to The Guardian, the fresh revelations come close on the heels of its own "published evidence" that stated that the US intelligence services had been receiving reports of ISI support for the Taliban in Afghanistan for many years.

The daily also states that the ISI is clubbed along with 36 dreaded terror outfits that includes Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led by Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs; the Iranian intelligence services, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The documents accessed by the daily also trace the background of 700 prisoners at Guantenamo that provides plenty of references about the hands of ISI in supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting Al-Qaeda.

The documents also give the example of a militant called Harun Shirzad al-Afghani, a veteran terrorist who arrived there in June 2007. His files say that he attended a meeting in August 2006 at which Pakistani military and intelligence officials joined senior figures in the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Taiba group responsible for the 2008 attack in Mumbai and the Hezb-e-Islami group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

In another such instance mentioned in the US documents and published by The Guardian, there is the mention of a 42-year-old Afghan detainee who has reportedly claimed, that in early 2007 Pakistani officials were present at a meeting chaired by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the supreme chief of the Taliban, of an array of senior insurgents in Quetta, the Pakistani city where it has long been believed the Taliban leadership are based.

The daily has apprehended that the fresh revelations will further strain the relations between US Spy agencies. It said, "It will further damage the already poor relationship between US intelligence services and their Pakistani counterparts, supposedly key allies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants in South Asia."

Pakistani government officials have constantly denied of any links between the ISI and other militant organisations.

OneIndia News