Pakistan’s hand in Pathankot airbase attack confirmed by US

The attack on Pathankot Air Force Station on January 2, 2016 killed six Indian security personnel. The attack was done by a heavily armed group of people. The latest break in the investigation of the case is that US just produced evidence which confirmed that the attack on airbase did come from Pakistan. This evidence came two months after asking Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the 2016 Pathankot terrorist attack to justice.

After the attack, India blamed Pakistan-based jihadi group Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). Now, the US informed NIA that they tracked the IP addresses of Facebook accounts of JeM handlers who were behind the attack. They found that the IP address of the website of Al Rahmat Trust, the outfit’s financial arm, came from Pakistan.

Their investigation also found Facebook groups accessed by friends of JeM handler Kashif Jaan. They were related to jihad. JeM also had photos of the four killed terrorists — Nasir Hussain, Hafiz Abu Bakar, Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum.

According to an official report, the US confirmed that all these websites’ IP addresses came from Pakistan. The report says that the photos were uploaded around the same time as the attack on Pathankot.

According to report, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed leader who gave directions over phone to the terrorists regarding the attack on the airbase managed to flee to Afghanistan from Pakistan.

A member of Joint Investigation said that the alleged JeM handler who carried out telephonic communication more than two-dozen times with the terrorists in Pathankot managed to cross into the Afghan border.

The attack on the airbase occurred few days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to Sharif on his birthday and on the occasion of his granddaughter’s wedding. The move was supposed to show there would be better ties between the two countries in future.

Image Credit: Harvinder Chandigarh / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_landscape_near_Dunera_,Pathankot_02.jpg