A court on Saturday rejected a request for bail made by Malik Ishaq, the founder of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group. Ishaq has been accused of making speeches inciting sectarian hatred against Shias. Earlier this week, police had detained Ishaq, also linked to the defunct Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, at Lahore airport on his return from Saudi Arabia. He appeared in court on Friday in front of a judicial magistrate amid tight security and was sent to the city’s Kot Lakhpat jail for a 14-day-long judicial remand.
The groups, Laskhar-e-Jangvi and the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, have been blamed for scores of attacks on Shias in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country. Ishaq has been implicated in dozens of cases and was also accused of masterminding a 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, which wounded seven players and an assistant coach and killed eight Pakistanis. The attacks saw Pakistan stripped of its right to co-host last year’s cricket World Cup. He was released on bail in July last year after serving a jail term of nearly 14 years. Since his release he had been frequently put under house arrest as officials say his sermons raised sectarian tensions.
Malik Ishaq of the LeJ is accused of carrying out hundreds of murders but was not convicted because of lacunas in the legal system and the police’s inability to collect evidence or run a sound witness protection programme. Resultantly, he is being kept in jail under the Maintenance of Public Order act; there is no other substantive case against him. Let us also not forget that there are many in the lower judiciary who are sympathetic towards the jihadi mindset. Not surprisingly, Malik Ishaq was apparently allowed to cross-examine prosecution witnesses inside jail even in cases not related to him. The police official who tried to stop this practice was later murdered. Shahbaz Sharif is responsible for agreeing to keep silent on the jihadi ‘assets’. According to one source in the government, there was an understanding that he would take care of these elements, especially while the military was busy in the tribal areas. Therefore, the Punjab chief minister and his loyal law minister, Rana Sanaullah, deflected attention away from Punjab. There were even occasions when senior police officers covered up the jihadis’ tracks and maligned those that warned about such threats.
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