Watch Pak’s Hina Rabbani getting fact-checked for claiming ‘there are a million Abdul Raufs’

Former Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar went viral on Wednesday after insisting that there were ‘millions of Abdul Raufs’ in the country. The US-designated terrorist — linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba for decades — was recently photographed leading funeral prayers after Operation Sindoor. Pakistani authorities however claim that it is a case of mistaken identity, despite mounting evidence suggesting otherwise.

“I am telling you with authority, with evidence which has been shared with the whole world, that this is not the man that you (India) are claiming it to be. There are a million Abdul Raufs in Pakistan,” she contended during an interview with Al Jazeera earlier this week.

The assertion, however, fell flat when the interviewer noted that the national ID number of the deceased matched the one listed in the US Treasury Department’s sanctions database. Hafiz Abdul Rauf had been listed as a ‘specially designated global terrorist’ and a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The remarks also came weeks after Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto defended Rauf and insisted that he was not a terrorist – merely someone who shared a name. The Pakistani official had insisted during a United Nations briefing last month that the man photographed leading funeral prayers after Operation Sindoor was the victim of ‘name confusion’. The media wing of the Pakistani military — the Inter-Services Public Relations or ISPR — had also pushed a similar narrative over the past few months. 

“This delegation (India’s global outreach) goes around violently shoving this picture in everybody’s face. They say ‘Look, this guy is a terrorist.’ The fact of the matter is that this man is not a terrorist. He happens to have a name similar to one of the sanctioned people, but he’s not,” Bhutto had said.

Evidence shared by the ISPR itself however contradicts this claim. As the Al Jazeera journalist noted in the now-viral interview, the agency had provided a computerised national identity card for Hafiz Abdur Rauf showing a date of birth and identification number to underscore its point. However these details are an exact match with those on the US database of designated global terrorists. The CNIC also confirms Rauf’s affiliation with the Pakistan Markazi Muslim League — the successor to the Muslim League. Both of these organisations have been designated as fronts for the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) since April 2018.