Islamabad: Despite objections from the Opposition, Pakistan’s former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Ijaz Shah, who aided Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, was sworn in as Minister for Parliamentary Affairs on Tuesday by President Arif Alvi in Islamabad. The move has put the Imran Khan-led government and the Opposition, especially the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), at odds as former PM Benazir Bhutto had alleged Shah was among those who had hatched a conspiracy to kill her, reports Dawn.
Shah, a confidant of former Pakistan president General Pervez Musharraf, has also been accused of harbouring terror outfit Al-Qaeda’s founder-leader Laden in Pak. Laden was most wanted by the US for perpetrating the gruesome 9/11 attacks. In an interview in 2012, The Sydney Morning Herald had quoted former ISI chief General Ziauddin Butt as saying Shah had ordered to build the 3-storey walled compound in Abbottabad where Laden was hunted down and terminated by the US Forces in 2011. “I fully believe Ijaz Shah had kept this man (Osama bin Laden, in Abbottabad) with the full knowledge of Pervez Musharraf,” Butt had alleged. Shah has since dismissed the allegations. Shah served as Pakistan’s IB Director General from 2004 to 2008.