US President Donald Trump
NEW DELHI: The US Department of State on Friday designated The Resistance Front (TRF), which claimed responsibility for the April 22 Pahalgam massacre, a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).Highlighting the TRF’s involvement in multiple attacks against India, including the deadly Pahalgam attack, the state department said the decision reflected the Trump administration’s “commitment to protecting US national security, countering terrorism, and enforcing President Trump’s call for justice following the Pahalgam attack”.“TRF and other associated aliases have been added to LeT’s designation as a FTO and SDGT pursuant to section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and Executive Order 13224, respectively. The Department of State has also reviewed and maintained the FTO designation of LeT. Amendments to FTO designations go into effect upon publication in the Federal Register,” the statement read.The April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam’s Baisaran meadow, which claimed the lives of 26 civilians, was a closely guarded conspiracy hatched by Pakistan spy agency ISI and terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) on the directions of the country’s political and military brass, and executed exclusively by Pakistani terrorists. In what sources have described an LeT-ISI joint project akin to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) gave specific directions to Pakistan-based Lashkar commander Sajid Jutt to deploy only foreign terrorists for the gruesome targeted killings in Pahalgam’s Baisaran valley. To ensure complete secrecy, no Kashmiri terrorists were taken on board, and instead, LeT foreign terrorists operating in J&K for sometime were told to execute the killings while ensuring minimal local involvement on a “need-to-know” basis. The Pahalgam attack squad was led by Sulaiman, a suspected former Pakistani special forces commando, who had trained at the LeT Muridke hub in Pakistan’s Punjab province before crossing the LoC in 2022 with his M-4 weapon to enter the Jammu region. Two other Pakistani terrorists were members of the squad. Satellite phone analysis has revealed that Sulaiman’s location on April 15 was in Tral forest, indicating he was in the vicinity of the attack site at Baisaran for almost a week before the incident. Sulaiman was also involved in the April 2023 attack on an Army truck in Poonch, in which five soldiers were killed. However, he laid low for the next two years, before carrying out the ISI-LeT mission. Sources did not reveal the identities of the two other Pakistani terrorists who selectively gunned down the 26 civilians — all men and 25 of them being Hindus.There are currently about 68 foreign terrorists and three local terrorists active in the Valley. Only one local terror recruitment has been reported so far this year.
