Ever since Pakistan’s new Army chief General Asim Munir picked General Ahmed Sharif to lead the powerful Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR)– the Army’s media wing, the latter’s background has generated a lot of interest. Sharif is the son of controversial, and blacklisted nuclear scientist Bashiruddin Mahmood.
Mahmood was arrested in 2003 and later released by intelligence agencies of Pakistan for alleged links with Osama bin Laden. He had met the Al Qaeda chief to ask for funds to develop Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
What pushed Mahmood to envision Pakistan as a nuclear superpower was his country’s shameful defeat at the hands of India in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. He witnessed the unconditional surrender of Pakistan in 1971 and was moved to fortify Pakistan’s survival by means of developing nuclear power.
He was part of many high-level programs on nuclear development. He was the director of the Pakistan Atomic Energy commission and was notorious for attending rallies with Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed.
Prematurely retiring from PAEC, Mahmood founded the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), a militant organization banned by the United States Department of Treasury on December 20, 2001. It was also placed on the Patriot Act Terrorist Exclusion List. It is suspected of supplying information about constructing nuclear weapons to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
Often described as a “mad scientist”, Mahmood is known to have very controversial opinions on science as he subscribes to a school of thought described as Islamic science. He holds the Quran to be the fountainhead of scientific knowledge. He believes that jinns can generate electricity which are described in the Koran as beings made of fire. In his paper on jinns and electricity he has proposed that these divine entities could be used to solve the energy crisis of the world.
The UN says Bashiruddin had met with slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and “provided information about the infrastructure needed for a nuclear weapons programme and the effects of nuclear weapons”. In 2010, Mahmood himself admitted to have met the Al-Qaeda chief with the aim of raising funds for nuclear arms for Pakistan.