Washington: Pakistan's spy agency ISI sponsors terrorism in Kashmir and it oversees terrorist groups there, the FBI has said in the first ever open acknowledgment by a US agency that Islamabad is a 'State Sponsor of Terrorism'.
In a 43-page affidavit to a US court in Alexandria in a case related to the arrest of Kashmiri separatist leader Ghulam Nabi Fai, Special FBI agent Sarah Webb Linden said that the ISI's Security Directorate "oversees Kashmiri militant
groups".
Linden mentioned about Brigadier Javeed Aziz Khan, the ISI officer who handled Fai, head of the Washington-based Kashmiri American Council (KAC), and identified him as Fai's primary supervisor within the spy agency.
"On July 17, 2009, Khan e-mailed Fai a detailed outline for the format of a briefing about the history and goals of KAC which Fai was to provide during the upcoming visit of a Pakistani dignitary. I believe that Khan referred to the upcoming visit of Major General Mumtaz Ahmad Bajwa, who in late 2008 had been placed in command of the ISI's Security Directorate, which oversees Kashmiri militant groups," Linden said in her affidavit.
This is the first ever open acknowledgment by the United States that Pakistan is a State Sponsor of Terrorism, an argument which India has been making for long.
The FBI's affidavit before the Alexandria court adds to the revelations during the trial of Tahawwur Rana in a Chicago court early this year.
Now, it is being argued that Pakistan fits into American standard of State Sponsors of Terrorism criteria in more than one way.
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