Qari Saifullah Akhtar

Qari Saifullah Akhtar (Urdu: قاری سیف اللہ اختر‎; died 9 January 2017) was an alleged member of Al-Qaeda who was in Pakistani custody few times prior to his death. Akhtar, a graduate of Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia in Karachi, had been the leader of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), a jihadi organization. He is a key figure and founder of HUJI and has involved in jihadi groups since the early 1980s. He was appointed the head of HUJI following the killing of Mawlana Irshad Ahmed at Sharana during clashes with Soviet forces in June 1985. He was reportedly involved in the 1995 coup attempt to topple the Pakistani government led by Benazir Bhutto. When HUJI merged with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) around 1990 to form Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), Akhtar acted as deputy to former HUM leader and then amir Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil. HUA dissolved back into two separate groups in 1997, allowing Akhtar to become amir of HUJI. Since 1998 when Osama bin Laden released a fatwa under the banner World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders, segments of HUJI have joined al-Qaeda. It has been reported that Akhtar was running a training camp at Rishkhor, Afghanistan before the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and had trained 3,500 persons in conventional and unconventional combat. He disappeared from Afghanistan but was apprehended in August 2004 in the United Arab Emirates. He was then handed over to Pakistan.

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