Last week our sources confirmed a report that Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the leader of the Harakat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI, or the Movement of Islamic Holy War), was released from Pakistani custody in early December 2010 (you can read the report and all the information about Akhtar’s connections to al Qaeda and Pakistan’s military and intelligence service here.) The Associated Press has confirmed Akhtar is now free, and even quoted Punjab province’s law minister (who ironically is a known Lahskar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan sympathizer):
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, the top judicial official in Akhtar’s native Punjab province, told The Associated Press he was released from four months of house arrest in early December because authorities finished questioning him in connection with the October 2007 attempted assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and found no grounds to charge him. Bhutto was killed in December the same year.
If Pakistan can’t find an excuse to keep the likes of Akhtar behind bars (not that he was ever arrested, according to my sources), does it deserve the hundreds of millions the US continues to pile on to try to get the country to turn a corner?
