Jailed Pakistani army officer requests the government to terminate its military alliance with the US

Ali Khan, a brigadier with the Pakistan Army who was arrested for having insurgent links in May 2011, today requested the Pakistani government and the armed forces to cut all its alliances with the United States of America.

Ali Khan claimed that the US is forcing the Pakistani armed forces to fight its own people. He further said that to reclaim some of the dignity, which the nation lost by supporting the US in its anti-terror measures, all military ties with the Americans should be immediately terminated.

Ali Khan, who served in the Pakistani Army for 32 years, was the senior most army officer to be arrested for having ties with banned Islamists. Khan was arrested in Rawalpindi for having alleged ties with the international Sunni pan-Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), which is banned in Pakistan ever since 2004. Investigators accused him of plotting with several other lower ranking officials and HuT members, to recruit officers to the banned organization.

There is widespread fear among the US and other NATO nations that militant Islamists are infiltrating the Pakistani Army. The arrest of Brig. Khan last year only added further anxiousness among the Western nations. However, it should be noted that many of Khan’s colleagues and his family members claimed that he was arrested due to professional jealousy and vengeance among the army officials. One of his colleagues even claimed that Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pak Army chief is responsible for his arrest.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) is an anti-democratic militant organization, which want to unify all the Muslim majority nations in the world to a single Islamic Caliphate. It was founded in 1953 by Palestinian political activist Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. Currently, the HuT is estimated to have as many as one million followers, spread out in 40 nations. Palestinian Islamic scholar Ata Abu Rashta is the current leader of the HuT. The organization is banned in several nations such as Russia and Egypt, but is free to operate in several others, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Yemen.