As Pakistan enters the final stages of its efforts to be taken off the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) ‘grey list’ this year, all eyes are on action against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) founder Masood Azhar, and his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar, two of the men most wanted by India for their role in many terror attacks, including the IC 814 aeroplane hijack in 1999 and Parliament attack in 2001. While Rauf Asghar was taken into custody along with 44 JeM members in 2019, officials say Pakistani law enforcement agencies are now in the process of “assessing” Masood Azhar’s whereabouts, including on whether he is in Pakistan. The Pakistani law enforcement agencies have discussed tracking Azhar’s possible move to Afghanistan with the Taliban regime as well, the officials said.
The Pakistani search for Azhar is being speeded up with some urgency, officials confirmed, as a senior FATF team is expected to visit Islamabad and other cities for an “on-site visit” from August 28-September 2, to verify whether Pakistan has carried out all the actions on its 34-point task list handed after it was put on the ‘grey list’ in 2018. If the team is satisfied by its findings, Pakistan is expected to be formally taken off the “increased monitoring” list, as the ‘grey list’ is known, during the FATF’s next plenary session in October this year.
According to submissions by the Pakistani government, its National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) held a meeting in early March to coordinate the hunt for Masood Azhar, who agencies claim is on the run, and the process to declare Azhar a “proclaimed offender” is under way. A terror financing case was also lodged against Azhar in March 2021, and more investigations are “contingent upon the arrest of Masood Azhar”, the submissions said. Pakistani investigations appear to conclude that Azhar is now either in Afghanistan, where the JeM has several training camps, or in Pakistan’s Khyber Puktunkhwa and Balochistan along the border, after a number of search operations in Pakistani Punjab were reportedly unsuccessful.
