Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan, who was responsible for shooting Malala Yousafzai and carrying out the Peshawar Army school terror attack, has escaped from an Army jail in Pakistan.

Sources in Pakistan confirmed that Ehsanullah has escaped from a safe house where he was detained along with his wife and two daughters. The Pakistan Army got to know about his escape on January 12 and soon after raided his home in Sagibala village in Mohamand tribal district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

His father Sher Mohamad, brother Shafiq and uncle Sher Badshah were arrested and are being interrogated, sources said, adding that an investigation into the matter has also been initiated.

In an audio recording released on Thursday and shared via an online private messaging platform, Ehsanullah claimed that he has succeeded in escaping from jail on January 11.

Ehsanullah, also spokesperson of another dreaded group Jamaat ul Abrar, is responsible for several terror attacks in Pakistan and carried a bounty of $1 million on his head.

In 2012, he shot Malala. She later went on to become the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ehsanullah is also a prime accused in the 2014 Army Public School (APS) Peshawar attack in which 134 school children and 15 staff members were killed.

Ehsan, whose real name is Liaqat Ali, released an audio message to confirm his dramatic escape from the custody of Pakistani security agencies.

He was also involved in the suicide bombing of Shiites in Rawalpindi and Karachi, killing nine foreign tourists and their guide in Gilgit-Baltistan area. Besides, the twin blasts targeting peace committee volunteers in Mohmand agency; suicide attack near the Wagah border and the 2016 bombing of an Easter gathering in a Lahore park that killed at least 75 people and injured more than 300.

In 2017, he surrendered before the Pakistan Army under “mysterious circumstances”.

Soon after his surrender, a Pakistani TV channel was allowed to interview Ehsan who at the time claimed that he was working for India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).

However, after three years in custody, Pakistani Army was yet to file a charge sheet against him, sources in Islamabad said.

According to a video circulating on Facebook and Twitter, Ehsan escaped on January 11, but the news has been given only now. No comments have been released yet by the Army. Ehsan, who took the responsibility for the attempted murder of Malala Yousafzai and for the attack at a Peshawar school that killed 150 children, most of them belonging to Army families, had been taken by the ISI people from Afghanistan.

Ehsanullah said that he would soon expose all the officials who were involved in the conspiracy against him.