7/27/2019 Ashton confirms Morsi is alive and well - but Egypt's impasse goes on - The Guardian - Wednesday, 31. July 2013.…

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*The Guardian | Wednesday 31 July 2013 19

InternationalInternational editor: Charlie English

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Warning of more jailbreak attacks afterPakistani Taliban free up to 300 militantsSecurity failings exposed by assault on prison

‘Contagion’ fears followingsimilar escape in Iraq

 Jason BurkeSouth Asia correspondent

 A jail break in Pakistan in which up to 300Islamist prisoners escaped could lead to awave of similar attempts to free detainedextremists, security experts and offi cialshave warned.

The prison, in the western city of DeraIsmail Khan, was attacked on Mondaynight with suicide bombs, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and waves of gunmenwearing police uniforms.

Authorities said 24 wanted terroristswere among those freed. Six policemenwere killed in the two-hour firefight.

The attack, which the Pakistani Taliban(TTP) said it carried out, underlines thecontinuing weakness of agencies chargedwith maintaining security and counteringviolent extremism in the country. Thereare scores of similar detention facilitiesacross the region where poorly trainedand badly equipped police and prisonpersonnel oversee thousands of militantprisoners.

Last week around 500 militants, includ-ing many convicted senior members of al-Qaida waiting to be executed, were freedin a similarly brazen attack in Iraq. Wavesof militants attacked the infamous Abu

Ghraib prison west of Baghdad using tac-tics almost identical to those employed inDera Ismail Khan. A statement of respon-sibility issued in the name of the IslamicState of Iraq and the Levant was laterposted on a jihadist forum.

“There is no evidence of any co-ordi-nation as such but one could reasonablyassume there is a contagion effect. It’s a bitlike hijacking in the 1970s and 1980s,” saidMagnus Ranstorp, an expert on Islamistgroups at the Swedish National DefenceCollege.

Imtiaz Gul, a security analyst in Islama- bad, said the Pakistani Taliban, a coalitionof groups largely based in the restive semi-autonomous zones along the border withAfghanistan, would have been aware ofthe operation in Iraq last week.

“All these groups watch one another.They pick up knowledge, learn lessons,replicate tactics … This will keep happen-ing,” Gul said.

One western se curity offi cial in Pak i-stan, speaking on condition of anonym-ity, described the prisons as “low-hangingfruit” for militants and said intelligenceservices across the region were well awareof the problem.

There have been many breakouts inPakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and else-where. Some have significant strategicconsequences. A mass escape in Yemenin 2006 saw almost the entire leadershipof the al-Qaida affiliate in that country(AQAP) gain freedom – a key factor in thesurge of violence there. AQAP now poses

the most significant threat to the west,offi cial s say.

Nearly 500 militants were freed from a

 jail in the southern Afghan city of Kanda-har in 2011, fuelling the local insurgency.“There is no strategy, no competence,

no vision. So it’s easy for these groups,”said Gul.

One strike in Pakistan last week tar-geted an offi ce of the main spy agency,the ISI, while another killed more than 50Shia Muslims.

The jail in Dera Ismail Khan was sup-posed to be heavily guarded. Officialsreceived a letter threatening an attack,

 but they did not expect it s o soon, saidKhalid Abbas, head of the prison depart-ment in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwaprovince. A curfew has been imposed andarmy units deployed.

Six Shia Muslim prisoners – most Paki-stanis are Sunni – were killed. Many of thehigh-profile prisoners who escaped belongto the violent sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, further evidence of increasingcollaboration between groups.

The Pakistani Taliban also claimedresponsibility for the two attacks earlierthis week and for the shootings of 10mountaineers at base camp on a famouspeak, Nanga Parbat, last month.

Hopes that the election of a new gov-ernment in Pakistan, led by Nawaz Sharif,might lead to less violence, have beendashed. Some analysts have suggestedthe ambivalent position taken towards theTaliban by some high-profile politiciansmight have emboldened militants.

Imran Khan, the former cricketer turnedconservative prime ministerial candidate,said negotiating with the extremists wasthe only way to end violence in the restivewestern border zones.

In April 2012, Taliban militants armedwith automatic weapons and rocket-pro-pelled grenades battled their way into aprison in the city of Bannu in north-westPakistan, freeing nearly 400 prisoners,including at least 20 described by police

as very dangerous insurgents.Militants said afterwards that they had

 been helped by inside rs in the securityservices. An inquiry later found therewere far fewer guards on duty than thereshould have been and those who werelacked ammunition.

One of the militants freed in that attack,Adnan Rasheed, recently gained attention

 by writing a letter to the teenage educa-tion activist Malala Yousafzai, who wasshot in the head by the Taliban last yearin an attempt to kill her. Rasheed saidhe wished the attack had not happened,

 but told Malala that she was targeted forspeaking ill of the Taliban. Reuters hasreported that Rasheed was the master-mind behind this latest attack.

• The most high profile: Abu Yahya,a senior al-Qaida propagandist andorganiser, won global renown amongmilitants for escaping from the high-security US-run detention centre atBagram in Afghanistan in 2005. He waskilled by a drone strike last year. • The most damaging: in February2006, Naseer Abdul Karim Wuhayshiand 22 other suspected al-Qaida mem-

 bers broke out of a jail in Sana’a, the

capital of Yemen. They went on to buildthe affi liate of the group that is nowseen as posing the biggest threat to thewest. • The most escapers: more than 900prisoners escaped f rom Sarposa prisonin Kandahar after a suicide attackercrashed a huge car bomb into its gatesin June 2008. • The most unlikely: Rashid Rauf, aBritish militant detained by Pakistani

security agencies escaped whenallowed to go to the toilet by policemenaccompanying him to a court in 2007.He was later killed. • The most resembling a prison escapefilm script: in 2011, 35 prisoners facingterrorism charges escaped through asewage pipe from a temporary jail inthe Iraqi city of Mosul – as a convictdoes in the 1994 movie the ShawshankRedemption.

Jihadi jailbreaks

 Ashton confirms Morsi is alive and well – but Egypt’s impasse goes on Patrick Kingsley Cairo 

The EU’s foreign policy representativeLady Ashton has confirmed that MohamedMorsi is safe and well, after a two-hourmeeting with Egypt’s overthrown presi-dent – his first disclosed contact with theoutside world since he was arrested andheld incommunicado in an unknown loca-tion on 3 July.

 Ashton said Morsi was aware of eventsoutside, and Egypt’s army had freelyagreed to their meeting. “He has accessto information, in terms of TV and news-papers, so we were able to talk about thesituation and the need to move forward,”she said.

 Ashton said she did not know where hewas being held; she was reported to have

 been taken to the meeting by military heli-copter. It has previously been suggestedthat Morsi was being held either inside amilitary prison, or at one of Cairo’s severalpresidential palaces – or at the city’s Toraprison, where Morsi’s predecessor HosniMubarak is being held.

 Ashton is in Cairo to try to negotiatean unlikely settlement between Morsi’sMuslim Brotherhood and the army, butdemands and recent behaviour from

 both sides mean reconciliation is far fromlikely. The Brotherhood’s core demand isfor Morsi’s return as president – a requisitethe army will never agree to. Meanwhile,the army has made negotiations almostimpossible by mounting a crackdown onsenior Muslim Brothers and killing dozensof their followers.

Ashton said yesterday “any violence

must stop”. Referring to the pro-Morsi sit-ins, the interim vice-president, MohamedElBaradei, speaking alongside Ashton,added: “Once we contain the violence thatis taking place, then there wil l be room fora peaceful way to disband the demonstra-tions in different parts of the country andgo into a serious dialogue.”

Morsi was held without charge formore than three weeks before prosecu-tors revealed last Friday that he was underinvestigation for conspiring to help thePalestinian Islamist group Hamas murderpolice offi cers during Egypt’s 2011 upris-ing. A spokesman for the Muslim Brother-hood called the allegations “laughable”.

With or without Ashton, Egypt’simpasse looks set to continue. The Broth-erhood was scheduled to defy the mili-tary’s call for them to leave the streets

with another mass protest in Cairo yes-terday afternoon.

The army sees an end to such marches,and the closure of pro-Morsi sit-ins – suchas the camp at east Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adaw-iya – as a prerequisite for negotiations. Butthe Brotherhood sees its street presenceas its only safeguard against further crack-downs on its supporters.

 Senior members of the Brotherhoodargued that it was up to the military tocompromise first, as their recent and bru-tal treatment of Morsi supporters gavethe Brotherhood little faith in the army’sintentions.

Critics of the Brotherhood accuse it offostering a sense of victimhood and callmembers hypocrites for having ignoredthe brutal treatment of protesters duringMorsi’s tenure.Lady Ashton in Cairo yesterday

 A Pakistani journalist films the damage from Monday’s attack on the Dera Ismail Khan jail Photograph: Saood Rehman/EPA

‘All these groups watchone another. They

learn lessons … This will keep happening’