Pakistan : Over 400 Taliban prisoners freed

[Admin Khan]

WORLDPakistani Taliban Assault Prison, Freeing Almost 400By ISMAIL KHAN and DECLAN WALSHPublished: April 16, 2012PESHAWAR, Pakistan - In what is being called the biggest jail-break in Pakistani history, Taliban fighters stormed a prison in the northwestern town of Bannu early Sunday, freeing almost 400 prisoners, including a militant commander who tried to assassinate the former president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.The assault started at 1.30 a.m. Sunday when at least 100 militants driving pick-up trucks and armed with grenades and small arms attacked the main gate of the prison, which housed 900 inmates, provincial government officials said.After blasting their way into the prison, the attackers broke open cell doors and set free 384 inmates, including several who had been condemned to death, said the home minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Mohammad Azam Khan.*A senior security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said prison guards had offered little resistance to the Taliban, who were in "total control" of the facility for over two hours. "The militants asked them to get aside and leave," he said.The fierce, disciplined raid represented an operational boost and a propaganda coup for the Pakistani Taliban, which wasted little time in claiming responsibility."We have released our men without losing a single man," said Ihsanullah Ihsan, a spokesman for the group, speaking from an undisclosed location. "We had been planning this blessed operation for months."The authorities launched a search operation in Bannu and the towns of Lakki Marwat and Kohat, shutting down mobile phone networks and arresting 11 prisoners by evening. Another 20 voluntarily returned to the prison, said Mr.*Khan, the provincial home minister.*But the most likely destination for many of the fugitives was North Waziristan, a lawless tribal area adjoining Bannu that is rife with militants from Al Qaeda, the Haqqani Taliban network and other militant groups, many operating on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. North Waziristan has born the brunt of the C.I.A.'s drone strike campaign, which the Pakistani parliament last week demanded should end immediately."This is the largest jailbreak in Pakistan's history," said Malik Naveed Khan, a former police chief of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. "It's a very serious failure. Such a large number of people barging into a jail in the middle of the night raises serious questions."Mr. Khan noted that the Taliban's ability to attack in Pakistani cities had been eroded in the past year, but that the jailbreak would "give them a major boost to their morale."While the provincial police had received extra money, training and weapons, the prisons service remains woefully under-resourced, he added. "Our jails are not equipped to handle these kinds of military assaults."The scale and discipline of the Taliban jailbreak was in stark contrast to the disorganized response of Pakistani security forces. During the raid, militants kept the police at bay by blockading all roads leading to the prison. The police reach the prison only after two hours, by which time the militants had fled.Television footage from the scene showed the destroyed prison gate, empty cells and bullet cases scattered across the ground.It was not clear how many of the escapees were militants. But the provincial information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, described at least 20 as "very dangerous," and confirmed that one of them was Adnan Rashid, a junior air force officer who had been sentenced to death for his part in an attempt to assassinate General Musharraf on December 14, 2003.Mr. Rashid was one of six Pakistani Air Force soldiers convicted for their part in the plot, five of whom have been sentenced to death. General Musharraf lives in self-imposed exile in London, although he has repeatedly promised to return to Pakistan to re-launch his political career.Provincial officials admitted that the assault was an indictment of the security forces and their ability to protest the most sensitive installations."There has been an intelligence failure and there has been a security failure," the security official acknowledged. "There was no preemption and there was no response while shooting and bombing continued for more than two hours. It seems as though there was no real effort to stop the militants."Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad.ARTICLE TOOLSMULTIPLE PAGESSHARE*TO*FACEBOOKSHARE*TO*TWITTERVIEW ARTICLE ON NYTIMES.COM »

[کیش]

Brotherly love

[Talal]

Idk man ever since I saw this it sounded sketchy to me, is it a coincidence that these got released just before Taliban are about to go on their summer rampage ..there were already a lot of coordinated attacks across the border.


Anyways with the supply lies opening this isnt looking good

[khushal]

Idk man ever since I saw this it sounded sketchy to me, is it a coincidence that these got released just before Taliban are about to go on their summer rampage ..there were already a lot of coordinated attacks across the border.


Anyways with the supply lies opening this isnt looking good

these people have been convicted of attacking the pakistani state not NATO.

[Talal]

these people have been convicted of attacking the pakistani state not NATO.

I know that khushal, I was actually talking about in terms of the recent splintering between the pakistani groups..the reason for my suspicion is that usually the army is responsible for the detention of captured talibs..the fact that they got busted from a police jail and I didn't hear of any casualties from the police

seems a bit jumbled to me tbh, nevertheless this is gonna create a lot of problems for the army operation

[tor_khan]

^You doubt the intentions of the state apparatus????

[Talal]

^You doubt the intentions of the state apparatus????

that term alone is not enough if you are talking about Pakistan, you gotta be more specific

[Daruish]

talal is doing damage controle aka saving face.
whenever there is a big attack in Afghanistan than it is blamed on ISI so to make it look like it werent just some Afghans but a country's security personel were behind it.

the same here.

instead of thinking "this is pukhtunkhwa and all these guys involved are pukhtane who have sympathy for eachother and recall to history of the britihs raj here".
one goes in lines of making up the worst type of conspiracy theory ever.

A very simplistic view; those brothers need finances, ammunition, organization, training and etc.
The bigger picture-----US rebuff Pakistani parliament demands----these attacks are warning to US/NETO. What will be US response?