Former Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan has claimed that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) forced him to confess in 2017 that he surrendered because of his organisation Jama’at-e-Ahrar’s ties to India.
In his recently published blog, Ehsan also says that the ISI offered him money to come back to the country after his escape in 2020, adding the Pakistani spy agency's overtures to him and his associates included “millions of dollars” as well as land and housing properties in the Punjab province to secure his return back to Pakistan or maintain silence over his still-unexplained surrender back in 2017 as well as mysterious “escape” from prison in 2020.
Ehsan escaped back in February 2020 during an operation against anti-Pakistani militant groups against whom he had provided intelligence to the Pakistani security forces, according to a report by The Express Tribune,
It is claimed that Ehsanullah Ehsan, who had served as the TTP’s spokesperson, fell out with Fazlullah, his boss and the militant organisation chief. He then went on to set up Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) under the leadership of militant Omar Saeed Khorasani., who also had a fallout with Mullah Fazlullah. In 2017, under the yet-undisclosed agreement, Ehsanullah surrendered to the ISI in a deal negotiated with the help of some “senior (Pakistani) intelligence officials”. JuA maintained that he was kidnapped from eastern Afghanistan province of Paktika. Fazlullah was killed in an American drone strike in Afghanistan’s Kunar province in 2018.
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Contrary to the agreement, Ehsanullah claims he was forced to give a fabricated statement where he was forced to blame JuA’s close ties with Indian security agencies including monetary assistance from R&AW for his surrender. He alleges in his blog that his statement was prepared “by a brigadier and a colonel in the ISPR,” as quoted by The Print. He thanked lord for his safe escape from Pakistan which was a desperate attempt in the face of “mistreatment” by the security agency during his custody. But he made no revelations regarding his arduous “escape” from the country as well as his current location.
“The confessional statement was a script prepared by a brigadier and a colonel in the ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) and I was given two weeks to memorise it,” Ehsan writes in his blog. In his videotaped confession in 2017, Ehsan had said: “When they started taking help from India and RAW, I told Khorasani that we’re supporting the kuffar (non-believers) and helping them kill our own people in our own country.”
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“He (Khorasani) replied: ‘Even if Israel wants to fund me to destabilise Pakistan, I will not hesitate in taking their help’.” Ehsan in his confession further claimed that anti-Pakistan groups had established committees in Afghanistan through which they communicate and coordinate with RAW.
As per media reports,Ehsan masterminded the 2014 Peshawar attacks on school children, various attacks on Shias Muslims and is said to have shot Malala Yousafzai. After his escape in 2020, parents of the deceased children in the school attack filed a petition in Peshawar High Court to request a “contempt proceeding” against certain officials of the government responsible for this embarrassing “escape”.
