Islamabad moves UN panel separately to get TTP’s Chaudhry delisted

NEW DELHI: While Pakistan and China have mounted a massive ‘dossier diplomacy’ at the United Nations seeking to link terrorist group Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP) with India, it has emerged that Islamabad has separately moved the UN 1267 sanctions committee to get hardcore TTP terrorist Aamir Ali Chaudhry, who was involved in the failed 2010 terror attack on Times Square in New York, delisted.

Pakistan officially requested the UN committee in September to delist three of its nationals of which Chaudhry’s case raised eyebrows, ET has learnt. This, sources said, was part of Islamabad’s efforts to prune its own domestic list accordingly.

Chaudhry is an explosives expert who has been identified by the UN as “leading TTP’s efforts to develop a chemical poison” and has sound knowledge of electronics. According to the evidence listed against him, he was responsible for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing…supplying, selling or transferring arms and related material to” and “otherwise supporting acts of Tehrik-e-Taliban”.

The additional evidence against Chaudhry stated he was involved in helping build the “fertiliser selection for the bomb used in the failed May 2010 attack in New York City, United States (Times Square)”.

Further, it stated that Chaudhry “manufactured and prepared circuit boards for explosive devices and was also responsible for TTP’s electronic needs for producing landmines and improvised explosive devices”. He was said to be working on a TTP plot to “detonate explosives on an aircraft and had been working on a plan to use an airliner in an attack”. There was also evidence to suggest that Chaudhry had even volunteered to conduct a suicide operation for TTP.

He took instructions from TTP leader Qari Hussein, who is now dead as per the UN records. Chaudhry was, in fact, tasked with establishing a TTP network outside Pakistan and in late 2009 had selected a group of individuals, who would be used by Qari Hussein to disseminate TTP messages. There was a plan to conduct a rocket attack on Pakistan parliament, which was mysteriously never executed.

Despite this record, Pakistan in the garb of making peace with the Taliban, using the US support, has asked for Chaudhry’s delisting. While it has moved to delist three such TTP terrorists, the contradictions are visibly stark in this case. Chaudhry was proscribed by American authorities.

Yet, in the recently prepared terror dossier, Pakistan has claimed that India supported and sponsored TTP. The dossier, which was distributed to all P-5 countries, also has been handed over to the UN Secretary General. It’s believed that Pakistan and China are collaborating closely to give legitimacy to the dossier. India, meanwhile, has found the claims erroneous and baseless.