The Guardian | Wednesday 31 July 2013

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International

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Warning of more jailbreak attacks after Pakistani Taliban free up to 300 militants
Security failings exposed by assault on prison Contagion fears following similar escape in Iraq
Jason Burke South Asia correspondent
A jailbreak in Pakistan in which up to 300 Islamist prisoners escaped could lead to a wave of similar attempts to free detained extremists, security experts and ocials have warned. The prison, in the western city of Dera Ismail Khan, was attacked on Monday night with suicide bombs, mortars, rocketpropelled grenades and waves of gunmen wearing police uniforms. Authorities said 24 wanted terrorists were among those freed. Six policemen were killed in the two-hour reght. The attack, which the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) said it carried out, underlines the continuing weakness of agencies charged with maintaining security and countering violent extremism in the country. There are scores of similar detention facilities across the region where poorly trained and badly equipped police and prison personnel oversee thousands of militant prisoners. Last week around 500 militants, including many convicted senior members of alQaida waiting to be executed, were freed in a similarly brazen attack in Iraq. Waves of militants attacked the infamous Abu

All these groups watch one another. They learn lessons This will keep happening
Ghraib prison west of Baghdad using tactics almost identical to those employed in Dera Ismail Khan. A statement of responsibility issued in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was later posted on a jihadist forum. There is no evidence of any co-ordination as such but one could reasonably assume there is a contagion eect. Its a bit like hijacking in the 1970s and 1980s, said Magnus Ranstorp, an expert on Islamist groups at the Swedish National Defence College. Imtiaz Gul, a security analyst in Islamabad, said the Pakistani Taliban, a coalition of groups largely based in the restive semiautonomous zones along the border with Afghanistan, would have been aware of the operation in Iraq last week. All these groups watch one another. They pick up knowledge, learn lessons, replicate tactics This will keep happening, Gul said. One western security ocial in Pakistan, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the prisons as low-hanging fruit for militants and said intelligence services across the region were well aware of the problem. There have been many breakouts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Some have significant strategic consequences. A mass escape in Yemen in 2006 saw almost the entire leadership of the al-Qaida affiliate in that country (AQAP) gain freedom a key factor in the surge of violence there. AQAP now poses

A Pakistani journalist lms the damage from Mondays attack on the Dera Ismail Khan jail Photograph: Saood Rehman/EPA

Jihadi jailbreaks
The most high prole: Abu Yahya, a senior al-Qaida propagandist and organiser, won global renown among militants for escaping from the highsecurity US-run detention centre at Bagram in Afghanistan in 2005. He was killed by a drone strike last year. The most damaging: in February 2006, Naseer Abdul Karim Wuhayshi and 22 other suspected al-Qaida members broke out of a jail in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. They went on to build the aliate of the group that is now seen as posing the biggest threat to the west. The most escapers: more than 900 prisoners escaped from Sarposa prison in Kandahar after a suicide attacker crashed a huge car bomb into its gates in June 2008. The most unlikely: Rashid Rauf, a British militant detained by Pakistani security agencies escaped when allowed to go to the toilet by policemen accompanying him to a court in 2007. He was later killed. The most resembling a prison escape lm script: in 2011, 35 prisoners facing terrorism charges escaped through a sewage pipe from a temporary jail in the Iraqi city of Mosul as a convict does in the 1994 movie the Shawshank Redemption.

the most signicant threat to the west, ocials say. Nearly 500 militants were freed from a jail in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2011, fuelling the local insurgency. There is no strategy, no competence, no vision. So its easy for these groups, said Gul. One strike in Pakistan last week targeted an oce of the main spy agency, the ISI, while another killed more than 50 Shia Muslims. The jail in Dera Ismail Khan was supposed to be heavily guarded. Officials received a letter threatening an attack, but they did not expect it so soon, said Khalid Abbas, head of the prison department in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A curfew has been imposed and army units deployed. Six Shia Muslim prisoners most Pakistanis are Sunni were killed. Many of the high-prole prisoners who escaped belong to the violent sectarian group Lashkar-eJhangvi, further evidence of increasing collaboration between groups. The Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility for the two attacks earlier this week and for the shootings of 10 mountaineers at base camp on a famous peak, Nanga Parbat, last month. Hopes that the election of a new government in Pakistan, led by Nawaz Sharif, might lead to less violence, have been dashed. Some analysts have suggested the ambivalent position taken towards the Taliban by some high-prole politicians might have emboldened militants. Imran Khan, the former cricketer turned conservative prime ministerial candidate, said negotiating with the extremists was the only way to end violence in the restive western border zones. In April 2012, Taliban militants armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades battled their way into a prison in the city of Bannu in north-west Pakistan, freeing nearly 400 prisoners, including at least 20 described by police as very dangerous insurgents. Militants said afterwards that they had been helped by insiders in the security services. An inquiry later found there were far fewer guards on duty than there should have been and those who were lacked ammunition. One of the militants freed in that attack, Adnan Rasheed, recently gained attention by writing a letter to the teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban last year in an attempt to kill her. Rasheed said he wished the attack had not happened, but told Malala that she was targeted for speaking ill of the Taliban. Reuters has reported that Rasheed was the mastermind behind this latest attack.

Ashton conrms Morsi is alive and well but Egypts impasse goes on
Patrick Kingsley Cairo
The EUs foreign policy representative Lady Ashton has conrmed that Mohamed Morsi is safe and well, after a two-hour meeting with Egypts overthrown president his rst disclosed contact with the outside world since he was arrested and held incommunicado in an unknown location on 3 July. Ashton said Morsi was aware of events outside, and Egypts army had freely agreed to their meeting. He has access to information, in terms of TV and newspapers, so we were able to talk about the situation and the need to move forward, she said. Ashton said she did not know where he was being held; she was reported to have been taken to the meeting by military helicopter. It has previously been suggested that Morsi was being held either inside a military prison, or at one of Cairos several presidential palaces or at the citys Tora prison, where Morsis predecessor Hosni Mubarak is being held. Ashton is in Cairo to try to negotiate an unlikely settlement between Morsis Muslim Brotherhood and the army, but demands and recent behaviour from both sides mean reconciliation is far from likely. The Brotherhoods core demand is for Morsis return as president a requisite the army will never agree to. Meanwhile, the army has made negotiations almost impossible by mounting a crackdown on senior Muslim Brothers and killing dozens of their followers. Ashton said yesterday any violence must stop. Referring to the pro-Morsi sitins, the interim vice-president, Mohamed ElBaradei, speaking alongside Ashton, added: Once we contain the violence that is taking place, then there will be room for a peaceful way to disband the demonstrations in dierent parts of the country and go into a serious dialogue. Morsi was held without charge for more than three weeks before prosecutors revealed last Friday that he was under investigation for conspiring to help the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas murder police ocers during Egypts 2011 uprising. A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood called the allegations laughable. With or without Ashton, Egypts impasse looks set to continue. The Brotherhood was scheduled to defy the militarys call for them to leave the streets with another mass protest in Cairo yesterday afternoon. The army sees an end to such marches, and the closure of pro-Morsi sit-ins such as the camp at east Cairos Rabaa al-Adawiya as a prerequisite for negotiations. But the Brotherhood sees its street presence as its only safeguard against further crackdowns on its supporters. S enior members of the Brotherhood argued that it was up to the military to compromise rst, as their recent and brutal treatment of Morsi supporters gave the Brotherhood little faith in the armys intentions. Critics of the Brotherhood accuse it of fostering a sense of victimhood and call members hypocrites for having ignored the brutal treatment of protesters during Morsis tenure.

Lady Ashton in Cairo yesterday