A Snapshot of Brigadier Ijaz Shah: Bin Laden’s ISI Handler

Brigadier Ijaz Shah (Retd.), one of Pakistan’s most notorious spies, may not be a militant or terrorist in a practical sense of the word, but he is alleged to have been linked with some of the most high profile terrorists and the terrorist acts in the region. The latest allegation came from Pakistan’s former Army Chief General Ziaud Din Butt aka General Ziaud Din Khawaja who revealed at a conference on Pakistani-U.S. relations in October 2011 that the then Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Brigadier Ijaz Shah (Retd.), had kept Osama bin Laden in an IB safe house in Abbottabad (Roznama Jang (Urdu), December 8, 2011). In a subsequent, revealing interview with TV channel Dawn News, General Butt repeated the allegation, saying he fully believed that “[Brigadier] Ijaz Shah had kept this man [Bin Laden in the Abbottabad compound] and with the full knowledge of President Pervez Musharraf.”[1]