BBC Urdu reported on Dec. 11 that Pakistani intelligence arrested three military officers officers for spying at the Shamsi Air Force base in Baluchistan province and “inciting army officers to commit acts of terrorism.”
The court-martial of Col Shahid Bashir, Nadeem Ahmad Shah, a former air force pilot who is now an advocate, and Awais Ali Khan, an engineer who resigned from military two years ago, will get underway in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on Friday, BBC Urdu reported.
The three men were arrested by the military intelligence in Rawalpindi in May. Their families said they had been informed that the three men will face court martial proceedings for spying. The three men are currently in army’s custody in Kotli district of PoK.
BBC reported that they had been accused of leaking secrets about the Pakistan Air Force base at Shamsi in Balochistan and inciting army officers to commit acts of terrorism.
We’re not told who the officers were spying for and what acts of terrorism they planned to commit. But this tidbit of news from Dawn may provide a clue…
The Shamsi airbase in Balochistan is being used by American forces for logistical purposes…
Pakistan’s officer corps is riddled with terrorist sympathizers and active supporters. Just last week the US indicted a former Pakistani Army major for serving as the middleman between al Qaeda and terror suspect David Headley. More than 100 Pakistani Air Force personnel were arrested or released from service after the assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf in 2003. “Officials said some of the personnel had been dismissed because of their links with militants and sympathies for banned religious groups,” Dawn reported last summer. Another 40 military personnel, all of whom are “Islamists,” were arrested in 2006. One is the son of an Army brigadier. The list goes on.
The anti-terrorist factions in the Pakistani military and intelligence services are reluctant to move against the terrorist faction en masse for fear of sparking a civil war, which speaks volumes about the extent the security services have been penetrated.
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3 Comments
The obvious made public. Lovely.
Still, I do not see the value in hitting the base, since the Americans would just move the drones over to some other military airfield. And stealing a drone is pointless too without the controller technology, so it isn’t like they can use it against us.
Makes me wonder what other operations are being conducted….
Good army, Bad army….
In the country of the Islamic nuclear bomb.
Fail to see why Pak is any less dangerous to the US/West and the world than Iran. I’d vote that it is, far and away, RISKIER!
Obama has drawn clear lines that he won’t let Iran and North Korea to “game the system”. I wonder whats his plan for Pakistan who has already gamed the system and continues to do so, worse, while it is in the middle of a civil war?
Haha. Civil war in Pakistan? Are you joking?