Hardcore terrorists Latif and Riaz were described by Qazi as ‘two Pakistani nationals’ killed on ‘Pakistani soil’, thereby confirming that they were being given state support

The press conference addressed by Pakistan Foreign Secretary Muhammad Syrus Qazi on Thursday in Islamabad has done more harm to Pakistan’s security apparatus while again confirming that Pakistan continues to remain a safe haven for wanted terrorists.

Qazi, while accusing India of orchestrating “extra-territorial and extrajudicial” killings in Pakistan in the last two years, announced details of two such killings, which he claimed were done by Indian intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

“The first case is that of the assassination of Shahid Latif. On Oct 11, 2023, a group of criminals assassinated Shahid Latif outside a mosque in the city of Sialkot. Second case is that of the assassination of Muhammad Riaz who was assassinated during Fajr prayer, in a mosque in Rawalakot on September 8, 2023,” the foreign secretary told reporters.

However, what Qazi did not mention was that both Latif and Riaz were hardcore terrorists. Latif was a prominent member of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad whose ‘achievements’ included the 2016 terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. Riaz, who was also known as Abu Qasim Kashmiri, was a senior member of the Lashkar-E-Taiba, something which was also reported by the Pakistani media on his death.

Latif and Riaz were described by Qazi as “two Pakistani nationals” killed on “Pakistani soil” thereby confirming that these two terrorists were being given state support despite it being clear that they had carried out terrorist activities.

Both these organisations, Jaish and Lashkar, have been proscribed as terror organisations and banned in multiple countries including the United States.

Qazi also released a set of Indian passports, which he claimed belonged to those “Indian agents” who were behind this assassination plot.

Sources in the security establishment, said that it was very easy job for any state agency to procure or get hands on passports of any country and despite claiming to have a huge cache of evidence to back its story, the Foreign office of Pakistan just put out a set of passports which purportedly belonged to ‘Indian agents’ while not sharing any details of how the actual plot was conceived and concluded.

Interestingly, the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi, in a clever use of words, neither denied nor accepted the claims made by the Pakistani counterparts while stating that ‘Pakistan will be consumed by its own culture of terror and violence and that it will reap what it sows.’

As reported by this newspaper earlier (Pakistan based terrorists running scared, go into hiding) , more than a dozen Pakistani terrorists have met an untimely death in the last few years including Latif and Riaz.

Details accessed by the Sunday Guardian and put out in the public domain had revealed that at least 18 such killings have occurred in the last two years in Pakistan, of which 16 have occurred since February this year. All the 16 individuals who have been killed were either present or former active workers and functionaries of anti-India terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaishe-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahideen and all of them at one point or the other, had contributed by one way or the other to killing Indian citizens in India. These killings have led to present and former terror operatives who are based in Pakistan, to go underground.

Official sources, while commenting on the recent allegations by the Pakistan Foreign Secretary, said that these developments also cast an aspersion on the Pakistani security setup’s inability to protect its assets, as the Pakistan deep state, through the foreign secretary, had admitted that its men, many of them who have now outlived their utility, were being eliminated on Pakistan’s own soil by a foreign entity.