Anti-Islam film: Malik claims credit for producer’s arrest

Interior Minister says Dr Aafia Siddiqi could serve rest of her jail term in Pakistan.

WASHINGTON:

In yet another bizarre instance, courtesy Rehman Malik, the interior minister appeared on Saturday to claim credit for the arrest of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the producer of anti-Islam movie “Innocence of Muslims”.

“I don’t claim entire credit, but it is a credit for the Muslim Ummah, the credit goes to my government. In fact, it is our government and the entire world which took up this derogatory documentary film at all international forums,” Malik told a news conference at Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington on Saturday.

When pressed on the point that Nakoula had been arrested for violating terms of his bail in a separate case, Malik said, “I pointed out that he is a fugitive of law, I did have information. And perhaps that voice reached the right quarters, and he was arrested, it is not me who has made the arrest, but I became instrumental in appealing to the United States.”

About his meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the State Department, Malik said he thanked Clinton and President Barack Obama for condemning the anti-Islam film.

Making a case for the extradition of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist jailed in the United States for terror links, Malik said she could serve rest of her jail term in Pakistan.

He said that he had raised the issue of Dr Aafia Siddiqui in his meeting with FBI Director Robert Mueller, who said the suggestion could be considered.

Malik said he had also written to the US attorney general on the matter and would release the contents of his letter soon.

The interior minister said he also raised the issue of enforced disappearances in his meetings with US officials.

“I highlighted how aggression is coming to us from Afghanistan into Balochistan and through Mohmand Agency and Khyber. How arms and ammunition are being shifted to Pakistan in the hands of so-called Azad Baloch and Maulvi Faqirullah and Fazlullah,” he added.

Asked about the Haqqani Network, the interior minister said, “The Haqqanis are not Pakistanis. That is the wrong notion, the Haqqanis are Afghans located in Afghanistan. I have emphasised that while the US is concentrating on the Haqqani Network, what about the other networks? There are so many stakeholders who are against peace in Afghanistan. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan are victims of war.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2012.