IN June 2013, terrorists from the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan murdered 10 foreign climbers and a local guide after storming their mountaineering base camp in Gilgit-Baltistan. The massacre came as a terrible blow to Gilgit-Baltistan’s tourist economy as, prior to this, the area had been considered relatively safe for foreigners at least.

A few months later, police claimed to have nabbed some of those responsible for this attack, and at least a few of these militants were incarcerated in the Gilgit-Baltistan district jail. But then at the end of the previous month four inmates of that very jail staged an escape.

While one was killed and the other captured, one accused in the massacre, Habibur Rehman, escaped as did a militant named Liaquat who had been arrested in connection with an attack on the investigators of the Nanga Parbat tragedy.

Radicalisation in jails is the gift that keeps on giving.

Jailbreaks are troubling enough, but truly disturbing are reports that indicate jail staff may have actually aided in the escape.

According to a report by BBC Urdu, which quotes a member of the team investigating the escape, the prisoners established contacts with the guards posted outside their cells, and in fact convinced them of the rightness of their cause, ‘brainwashing’ them in the words of the report. Beyond this, the militants’ accomplices on the outside apparently established contacts with the jail staff, taking care of their ‘needs’.

Unfortunately, none of this comes as a surprise. There have been many cases where both criminals and militants have bribed or bullied jail staff into providing better facilities or even cellphones and such.

Nor is this the first time we have heard of those who murder in the name of religion in fact radicalising jail and police staff while being behind bars.

Soon after the arrest of Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Salmaan Taseer, a mobile phone video emerged of Qadri happily reciting naats while in police custody. Even more shocking is that the policemen in fact take turns to sit next to him while he does so, and there is little doubt that they know they are being filmed.

In fact, it seems as if they want to be filmed sitting next to this man, whom a disturbing number of people consider to be some kind of holy warrior.

It should come as no surprise, then, that at least one such person was willing to not only listen to Qadri’s warped views, but to also act on them. In October last year, a prison guard who had been deputed outside Qadri’s cell for three weeks went and shot Muhammad Asghar, a mentally ill 70- year-old who had been sentenced to death in a blasphemy case. Luckily, Asghar survived and subsequent investigation revealed that the guard had in fact been taking ‘religious lessons’ from Mumtaz Qadri. He wasn’t the only one to eagerly listen to Qadri’s sermons either, and the initial inquiry also revealed that Qadri had ‘prepared’ two other guards to go and hunt down other persons accused of blasphemy.

All this took place in an atmosphere where Qadri was treated less like a criminal who had murdered a prominent politician, and more as a star, a sought-after preacher of the faith. In an AFP story in the aftermath of Asghar’s shooting, other inmates complained that Qadri was given special treatment and was exempt from the routine work that they were made to do.

As for radicalisation in prisons, it’s apparently the gift that keeps on giving. The same story also quotes a convicted murderer as saying that a prison guard had tried to persuade him to murder two persons accused of blasphemy who were in the same jail as him. The argument made was that this was the only way he could atone for his sins.

It is, of course, well known that prisons around the world do serve as finishing schools for criminals, providing an opportunity for inmates to network, recruit and exchange notes. In Pakistan, the problem is compounded because of the incarceration of terrorists along with the general jail population, and one shudders to think of the kind of seeds hardcore terrorists have planted there.

Certainly, we know that their message and rhetoric is convincing, as evidenced by the seemingly unending supply of killers they possess. Certainly it ties in with our general reluctance (fear?) to question any rhetoric that is couched in religiosity, no matter how nihilist or bloodthirsty it may be.

But philosophical debates aside, all this points to a serious problem that needs to be addressed. It seems daunting no doubt, as every time a hole is plugged one finds that there are at least a dozen more that demand attention. But such is the nature of the existential war Pakistan is fighting; it is one that demands constant adaptation, constant vigilance and zero tolerance.

The writer is a member of staff.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2015

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