Al Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri spotted at Taliban meeting
Kashmiri is reported to have met with Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, in North Waziristan.
Kashmiri is reported to have met with Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, in North Waziristan.
Ustadh Ahmad Farooq, the chief of al Qaeda’s propaganda efforts in Pakistan, was thought to have been killed in a Predator strike with Ilyas Kashmiri.
The five leaders are based in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The designations highlight the interconnectedness of the various terror groups based in the region.
The terror group has been implicated as being behind numerous attacks inside India. The US said the Indian Mujahideen “maintains close ties” to Lashkar e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami.
The Harakat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami claimed it carried out the attack to force India to repeal the death sentence of a terrorist involved in the 2001 assault on the parliament in Delhi.
The tape casts further doubt that Ilyas Kashmiri, a top al Qaeda leader, and Ustadh Ahmad Farooq, al Qaeda’s media emir and top ideologue in Pakistan, were killed in a Predator airstrike in early June.
“The indications are that Kashmiri intentionally floated the news of his death in a drone attack to avoid the heat following the killing of Bin Laden in Pakistan,” according to a report.
Unidentified “sources” say that reports of the top al Qaeda leader’s death are premature.