Srinagar, 5 May: Chairman of Kashmir based Hurriyat Conference-APHC has urged Imams and people to hold funeral prayers in absentia for Sheikh Osama bin Laden after Friday prayers tomorrow afternoon, a APHC spokesman said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant outfit has paid rich tributes to its slain commanders including Gazi Naseeb-ud-Din on their anniversaries. In and emailed statement a spokesman of Hizb said, “An obituary meeting of Hizb Command Council was held in Muzafferabad under the chairmanship of Syed Salah-ud Din where glowing tributes were paid to Gazi Naseeb-ud-Din, Engineer Firdous Kirmani, Commander Manzoor Khan alias MK and Abdul Majeed Wani alias Gazi Illyas on their 14 martyrdom anniversary.”
The Hizb commanders were killed allegedly in custody after their arrest on March 6, 1997. “The commanders were martyred in custody after they refused to divulge secrets of the organization. They were given third degree torture,” he alleged.
A Canadian newspaper, which reported the Hizb link to the house, said Pakistan was hushing up the issue of ownership of the place.
Quoting an unnamed police source in Pakistan, Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported that the mansion where bin Laden lived belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen. "But the authorities have asked us not to share any information about the exact ownership," the paper said.
Land-registry officials in Abbottabad were summoned to a meeting on Tuesday and urged to keep quiet. "They are being instructed not to say anything about the land-ownership issue."
American officials have described the owners as 'brothers', and neighbours recalled seeing a pair of men, possibly ethnic Pashtuns from the rugged western frontier, who largely kept to themselves. Their names were reported in the local media as Bada Khan and Chota Khan.
A Pakistani official said the mystery surrounding the two men has deepened with the discovery that their national identity cards were fake. Demands grew louder on Tuesday for an investigation that would determine what support bin Laden received inside Pakistan.
Hizb, the biggest Cashmerian group in J&K, has a large local component of young Cashmiris. It was formed in 1990, at the initiative of the Jamaat-e-Islami by merging nearly a dozen small organisations of J&K and Pakistan-administered Kashmir-PAK. The outfit headed by Syed Salahuddin has several camps across the LOC in PK.
If the ownership is traced to Hizbul Mujahideen, it would mark an unusual example of co-operation between the militant group and its more extreme cousin, Al-Qaeda, the report said. HM has maintained a narrow focus on removing Indian forces from Kashmir, while al-Qaeda pursues global ambitions.
"This is the first time I've heard of links between Hizbul Mujahedeen and Osama, but its members would probably admire him," Stratfor's South Asia regional director Kamran Bokhari said.
Like other groups fighting Indian troops in the borderlands, HM's membership has never been rounded up by Pakistani forces, said the report, noting that some analysts say that Islamabad covertly supports the group.
Pakistan has denied any collusion with Cashmerian groups, saying that its leading intelligence service had been sharing information with US counterparts since 2009 about the compound where bin Laden was found.
Still, in the wake of the raid, Islamabad scrambled to ensure that precise ownership of the compound would not become public knowledge, and any link to HM would deepen Pakistan's embarrassment over bin Laden's death.
According to media reports, Hizbul Mujahideen, a cashmirian active in disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, owns the mansion that sheltered Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
