US sanctions TTP splinter group that attacked APS

US citizens have been forbidden from associating with the Tariq Gidar Group and the Jamaat ul Dawa al-Quran

WASHINGTON/ ISLAMABAD: The United States on Wednesday designated two Pakistan-based militant groups as global terrorists, including one which was responsible for the December 2014 attack on Army Public School.

As “Specially Designated Global Terrorists”, US citizens have been forbidden from associating with the Tariq Gidar Group (TGG) and the Jamaat ul Dawa al-Quran (JDQ).



Any assets owned by the groups under US jurisdiction will be frozen.

According to the US State Department, the TGG is a splinter group of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and is based in Darra Adam Khel.

US officials believe that the faction, led by Umar Mansoor, was responsible for the December 2014 massacre at the army-run school in Peshawar that left more than 130 children dead. Mansoor is said to also have ordered the January 2016 attack on a university in Charsadda that left more than 20 people dead.

The designation also says that the TGG was behind the 2008 kidnapping and beheading of Polish geologist Piotr Stanczak in Attock.



The JDQ is said to be based in Peshawar but had sworn allegiance to former Afghan Taliban supremo, Mullah Omar.

Further, it has alliances with al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and is accused of the 2010 kidnapping of British aid worker Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2016.