Author:
Publication: Sify News
Date: July 10, 2005
URL: http://headlines.sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13892920
Pakistan's militant training camps
are back in action after a yearlong gap and the old and new recruits are
flocking to them notwithstanding the official ban on various terror outfits
for carrying out strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and Afghanistan, a media
report has claimed.
Citing an example of the camps being
reopened, Pakistan Herald Magazine, in its cover story, said one of the
country's oldest militant training camps at Mansehra in the North West
Frontier Province was bustling with activity after a yearlong closure,
as old and new militants converged on it to resume their training.
"Our transport fleet is back, electricity
has been restored and communications systems are in place. Until 2001,
thousands of fighters trained here for operations in Kashmir and Afghanistan,"
the magazine quoted a guide who conducted the correspondent around as saying.
Rejecting the magazine's charge
as "baseless," Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said: "There are no
militant camps in Mansehra...I have no information on that. The claim is
totally baseless. We have no such information stating that the training
camps have been restarted."
Contrary to official denials, the
magazine said despite the ban, militant outfits like Hizbul Mujahideen,
Harkaul Mujahideen, al-Badr Mujahideen, LeT and Jiash-e-Muhammad managed
to stay in touch with their cadre in 2003-4, which was considered as their
worst year.
"These outfits stayed in touch with
their rank and file in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir and
continued to be in touch with their families," it said.
