- PPP’s questions are not without merit
PPP Senator Sherry Rehman, while referring to an unverified tweet by former TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan, in which he had threatened party chairman Bilawal Bhutto with the same fate as his late mother, inquired about the current ‘status’ of the notorious terrorist. She wondered whether or not he was currently in someone’s custody or not, since his mysterious escape earlier this year from the custody of Pakistan’s security agencies three years after he had surrendered to them under some sort of an information exchange deal. Not much else is known about his arrangement with the state and apart from a television interview to a private television channel that was rightly met with severe criticism; there was no word on whether or not he would have his day in court for committing some truly heinous crimes. The DG ISPR at the time, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, termed Ehsanullah turning himself in as a ‘turning point in the war against terrorism’, but what tangible value it added to the counterterrorism effort remains unknown. Although Interior Minister Ijaz Shah confirmed that Ehsanullah had escaped, he failed to provide any additional meaningful information about how it happened and what was being done to get him back. This absence of basic information may be frustrating for some but none more so than the families of the victims of the APS Peshawar massacre where 134 children were mercilessly gunned down, an attack to which Ehsanullah Ehsan is widely considered an accessory.
It is especially heart-wrenching that parents, some of whom lost all of their children in a single day, had to submit petitions in Peshawar High Court, seeking contempt of court proceedings against officials responsible for the escape while others held protests demanding answers. That for over three years, no charges were brought forward by the state against Ehsan, only for him to miraculously escape one day, demands an inquiry. Ehsanullah Ehsan and other hardcore terrorists like him are incapable of reform and definitely undeserving of any reprieve. All such enemies of the state must be brought to book, not trusted to become approvers.
