Pakistan: Hafiz Abdul Salam Bhuttavi, founding member of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and deputy to Hafiz Saeed is 'confirmed dead'. According to the information updated on the site of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Bhuttavi died of cardiac arrest in Muridke, Punjab Province on 29 May 2023 while he was in custody of the Government of Pakistan.
Notably, Bhuttavi was first listed on the UNSC wanted list in 2012 as being associated with Al-Qaida for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of” or “otherwise supporting acts and activities of” Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
Who was Hafiz Abdul Salam Bhuttavi
As per UNSC, Bhuttavi served as the acting emir of LeT or Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) on at least two occasions when Saeed was detained. Saeed was detained days after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks and held until June 2009. Bhuttavi handled the group's day-to-day functions during this period, and made independent decisions on behalf of the organization. Saeed was also detained in May 2002.
Bhuttavi was also LeT/JuD's preeminent scholar, had instructed its leaders and members, and issued fatwas authorizing LeT/JuD operations. Bhuttavi helped prepare the operatives for the November 2008 terrorist assault in Mumbai, India, by delivering lectures on the merits of martyrdom operations. The Mumbai attacks killed over 150 people and injured many more. Bhuttavi is responsible for LeT/JuD's madrassah (religious school) network.
In mid-2002, Bhuttavi was in charge of establishing a LeT organizational base in Lahore, Pakistan.
How Bhuttavi died
It is worth mentioning that this was not the first time when the news of his death was covered. Earlier in May last year, news agency PTI had reported about the death of the terrorist and sited the same reason as mentioned today on the site of UNSC. “Bhuttavi, 77, was incarcerated at District Jail Sheikhupura, some 60 kms from Lahore, since October 2019 in a terror financing case. On May 29, he felt severe pain in his chest and was shifted to hospital where he was pronounced dead (due to cardiac arrest) on arrival,” a JuD official told PTI.
His funeral was held at the LeT/JuD headquarters in Muridke in which a large number of the supporters of the banned organisation participated amid high security. A source in the Punjab government told PTI that JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, who is lodged at the Kot Lakhpat jail since 2019 serving multiple sentences in terror financing cases, had requested the government to allow him to attend Bhuttavi’s funeral but permission was not granted.
