Senior Pakistan Taliban leader Adnan Rashid, who escaped from jail last year after being convicted assassination attempts on Pakistan’s former military ruler and president Parvez Musharraf, has written a letter to Malala Yousufzai in which he termed attack on her as ‘shocking’.

Islamabad, July 17/Nationalturk-: Senior Pakistan Taliban leader Adnan Rashid, who escaped from jail last year after being convicted in assassination attempts on Pakistan’s former military ruler and president Parvez Musharraf, has written a letter to Malala Yousufzai in which he termed attack on her as ‘shocking’ and advised her to return and join a religious school for women in Swat.

“When you were attacked, it was shocking for me. I wish it (the attack) would never have happened,” Rashid wrote in the letter.

He wrote to Malala a day after her address at the United Nations General Assembly.

Malala, along with her friends was shot at point-blank range when her school van traveled through Swat last year. The 13-year-old girl was shot after she spoke against Taliban for not allowing girls to have an education in Pakistan. She remained admitted in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham for almost three months and was discharged after recovering. She recently addressed UN.

Adnan, a former junior technician of the Pakistan Air Force escaped from prison in April 2012 when at least 400 fighters attacked the facility, rejected Malala’s assertion that she was targeted by the Taliban for going to school.

“First of all, the Taliban never attacked you because of going to school or because of the fact that you were an education lover. The Taliban or Mujahideen are not against the education of any man or woman,” he wrote to Malala.

Adnan claimed that Taliban believed that you (Malala) was intentionally writing against them and running a smearing campaign to malign their efforts to establish an Islamic system in Swat. “Your writings were provocative,” he said.

He claimed that Malala wasn’t attacked because of her cause of education. “Thousands of girls had been to school and college before the Taliban insurgency in Swat, would you explain why you were the only one on the hit list?”

Adnan said Taliban were not the only ones blowing up schools but the Pakistan Army and Frontier Constabulary was as much to blame for it.

He said that the schools were being blown up so they can be used as hideouts and transit camps.

‘Let us leave it to Almighty’

Without saying whether murder bid on Mala was “correct or wrong” or whether she “deserved to be killed or not”, he said “Let’s leave it to Allah Almighty. He is the best judge.”

Adnan, who was in prison for masterminding a failed suicide attack on Pakistan’s former president General Parvez Musharraf before escaping last year, has regularly featured in videos released by the Taliban.

‘Malala should return and join female religious school’

Stating that he had written to Malala in his personal capacity and not as a member of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or any other group, Adnan advised Malala to return to Swat, Pakistan from UK, adopt the Islamic and Pushtoon culture, join any of the female religious schools near your home town, study and learn the book of Allah. “Use your pen for Islam to bring the plight of Muslim ummah to light and to reveal the conspiracy of the tiny elite who want to enslave humanity for their own evil agendas in the name of new world order,” he wrote.

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Faiz Ahmad / NationalTurk Pakistan News

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