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Pakistan prime minister lambasted for bin Laden 'martyr' remark

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Kyodo News

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan faced mounting criticism Friday for having called Osama bin Laden, the founder of the al-Qaida terrorist group, a &quot;martyr&quot; in a speech in the lower house of parliament the previous day.Khan, in a speech in the National Assembly, said Pakistan was left embarrassed nine years ago &quot;when the Americans came and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, martyred him.&quot;The status of martyr is given by Muslims to someone who dies fighting for Islam.Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in a raid on his hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, near a military academy, in the wee hours of May 2, 2011 after years of eluding detection.The remarks by Khan, who leads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, were denounced by opposition parties and on social media.Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of Pakistan People Party that rules the country&#x27;s only opposition-led province, said Khan was &quot;consistent&quot; in his &quot;appeasement of violent extremism&quot; and likened his policy of simultaneously pursuing ties with the United States to &quot;running with the hare and hunting with the hound.&quot;The other major opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, also came down hard on Khan, with former Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif saying bin Laden &quot;brought terrorism to our country, yet the prime minister has the gall to call him a martyr.&quot;Former Foreign Minister Khurram Dastgir, of the same party, said he will seek a debate in parliament on the issue on Saturday.Foreign Ministry spokesman Aisha Farooqui, when asked for comment, deferred to Khan&#x27;s political aide Shahbaz Gill, who tweeted Thursday, &quot;An unwarranted attempt is being made at home/abroad with a clear intent to make his remarks controversial unnecessarily.&quot;&quot;PM&#x27;s and Pakistan&#x27;s commitment against terrorism is unwavering and our track record in eliminating this menace is better than anyone else in the world,&quot; he said.A day earlier, the ministry had reacted to the U.S. State Department&#x27;s latest annual Country Reports on Terrorism by saying it neglected to acknowledge Pakistan&#x27;s &quot;crucial role in decimating&quot; al-Qaida.It said Pakistan was &quot;selectively&quot; criticized for allegedly harboring and allowing the Afghan Taliban, the affiliated Haqqani network and other externally focused terror groups to operate from its soil.Khan has in the past held a sympathetic view of the Taliban, earning him the &quot;Taliban Khan&quot; moniker which he still struggles to shrug off.In an television interview in May 2018, he parried questions if he considered bin Laden as a martyr, saying he would not like to comment.<div>==Kyodo</div>

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan faced mounting criticism Friday for having called Osama bin Laden, the founder of the al-Qaida terrorist group, a "martyr" in a speech in the lower house of parliament the previous day.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan faced mounting criticism Friday for having called Osama bin Laden, the founder of the al-Qaida terrorist group, a "martyr" in a speech in the lower house of parliament the previous day.