Military personnel punished: DG ISPR

RECORDER REPORT

ISLAMABAD: The chief military spokesperson, on Wednesday, said that action has already been taken against the army officials who were responsible for the escape of former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan from their custody.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General, Major-General Babar Iftikhar, while speaking to foreign journalists at the ISPR office, said that the escape of Ehsan was a "very serious matter" and after a thorough investigation, action was taken against the responsible army officers.

"Efforts are underway to re-arrest him [Ehsanullah Ehsan], but at the moment we are not aware of his whereabouts," he said.

The ISPR DG spoke to representatives of foreign news outlets in Pakistan on a variety of national and regional issues, including Afghanistan peace talks, extremism in the former tribal areas and relations with archrivals India.

Commenting on recent threatening messages from the absconding militant commander to the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate, Malala Yousufzai on Twitter, Maj-Gen Babar said that as per the information available to him the account from which the threats were hurled was a fake one.

The military spokesperson also updated about the progress of the commission formed over the issue of missing persons, saying that 4,000 out of the 6,000 cases have been resolved and further progress in this regard is expected soon.

General Babar maintained that the longstanding issue of missing persons has been resolved at a time when the families belonging to Balochistan’s missing persons recently ended their days-long sit-in in Islamabad.