The JIT report of Mufti Shakir’s interrogation in Karachi’s Central Prison in March 2014 offers a chilling insight into the mindset of a violent extremist, while the events that followed illustrate the terrible failings of our criminal justice system.

Mufti Shakir was arrested on suspicion of having masterminded the bombing that had killed Sindh’s counterterrorism chief Chaudhry Aslam in January that year.

During his interrogation — which included the confession that he had also murdered 10 policemen and an army soldier — Mufti Shakir claimed he had offered to undertake the suicide mission against SP Aslam himself. However, a Lashkar-i-Jhangvi accomplice dissuaded him, saying that as a ‘religious scholar’ his skills as a preacher were too important to be sacrificed.

So Mufti Shakir, says the JIT report, mentally prepared a 25-year-old named Naimatullah over the course of a week for the task. The success of the operation was a huge morale booster for the many extremist groups fighting the state and, conversely, a major setback for law-enforcement authorities.

If given credence, the account confirms in several ways what is thus far known about the ‘traditional’ path to militancy for many in the ’90s: poverty, a madressah education with a lack of any substantial formal schooling, and a family with equally hard-line religious beliefs.

To this country’s enduring misfortune, there were at the time numerous jihadi outfits that young men with extremist mindsets could join and where their inclination to violence would be nurtured and given an outlet. Having worked his way through several of them, Mufti Shakir joined the TTP in 2012. As a ‘commander’ he proceeded to radicalise the next generation of recruits — such as the young man who was cannon fodder in the elimination of SP Aslam.

With his violent past and clear potential for further mayhem, not to mention the findings of the JIT report, it can scarcely be comprehended how this high-level militant managed to get bail. The abject failure by investigative authorities to build a prosecutable case against him has had deadly consequences.

It is believed that having fled to Afghanistan where he is running a training camp for militants, Mufti Shakir has since dispatched operatives to target police officials in Karachi. The confluence of single-minded militants and a criminal justice system whose weaknesses defy belief amounts to a scenario in which it will be near impossible for Pakistan to win its battle against terrorism.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2017