WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani said on Wednesday the report that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had a heart surgery in Pakistan had “no basis whatsoever”.
“Sometimes intelligence tips received by professionals turn out to be wrong,” said the ambassador while commenting on a report circulated by a private intelligence agency. “The story about Mullah Omar falls under that category.”
Mr Haqqani recalled that in 2001 US intelligence sources reported that Osama bin Laden was receiving dialysis treatment in Pakistan but it turned out to be incorrect. “Such reports are fabricated by those who want to give Pakistan a bad name.”
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Eclipse Group, which circulated the story, had run intelligence-gathering operations for the US government in Afghanistan.
Several prominent American and British newspapers – including the Post and The Telegraph, London – reproduced the story but they also quoted Afghan intelligence sources in Kabul as saying that they had no knowledge of the heart attack.
According to this report, Mullah Omar had a heart attack on Jan 7 and was treated for several days in Karachi.
A doctor at the hospital, which was not identified, said he saw Mullah Omar struggling to recover from an operation to put a stent — an artificial tube — in his heart.
He is now said to be at a safe-house run by ISI, in Karachi, the report claimed.
The Eclipse Group claimed that Mullah Omar was rushed to hospital by the ISI where he was given heparin, an anticoagulant, and operated on.
“While I was not personally in the operating theatre,” the doctor said, “my evaluation based on what I have heard and seeing the patient in the hospital is that Mullah Omar had a cardiac catheter complication resulting in either bleeding or a small cerebral vascular incident, or both. After the operation, there seemed to be some brain damage with Mullah Omar having slurred speech.”
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