Masood Azhar

• 1. Introduction

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  Masood Azhar is the founder of the Pakistan-based militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed, and BBC News once described him as "the man who brought jihad to Britain." That label is unusual for a militant leader whose group is best known for attacks on Indian targets. His influence was never limited to South Asia, and his name surfaces in places far from the Kashmir valley. This documentary asks how one man's reach stretched so widely. It asks why a government that held him in prison chose to set him free. And it asks why the world's most powerful body took so long to name him a terrorist.

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• 2. Bahawalpur Roots

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  Muhammad Masood Azhar Alvi was born in Bahawalpur, in Pakistan's Punjab province, on the 10th of July 1968. Some sources give the 7th of August instead. He was the third of 11 children.

  His father, Allah Bakhsh Shabbir, was the headmaster of a government-run school. He was also a cleric with Deobandi leanings. The family ran a dairy and poultry farm.

  After class 8, Azhar left mainstream schooling and enrolled at the Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia. He graduated in 1989 as an alim, a trained religious scholar, and was soon appointed as a teacher.

  One description calls him an old devotee of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, a radical Deobandi scholar. Jhangvi founded Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, an organisation set against Shia Muslims. The madrasa where Azhar studied and taught was itself deeply involved with a group called Harkat-ul-Ansar, and that group would soon claim him.

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• 3. Recruiter Abroad

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  A training camp in Afghanistan was Azhar's first step into Harkat-ul-Ansar. He did not complete the course. He nevertheless joined the Soviet-Afghan War and retired after suffering injuries.

  Harkat then made him head of its department of motivation. He also took editorial charge of two publications, the Urdu-language magazine Sad'e Mujahidin and the Arabic-language Sawte Kashmir.

  As general secretary of Harkat-ul-Ansar, Azhar travelled widely to recruit, to raise funds and to spread the message of Pan-Islamism. His destinations included Zambia, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Mongolia, the United Kingdom and Albania.

  In 1993, by his own confession, Azhar went to Nairobi, Kenya. There he met leaders of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a Somali group aligned with al-Qaeda. The group had asked Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, known as HuM, for money and recruits. Indian intelligence officials believe he made at least three trips to Somalia and helped bring Yemeni mercenaries there.

  August 1993 brought Azhar to the United Kingdom for a tour of speeches, fundraising and recruitment. He spoke at some of Britain's most prestigious Islamic institutions. These included the Darul Uloom Bury seminary, Zakariya Mosque, Madina Masjid in Blackburn and Burnley, and Jamia Masjid. His message held that a large share of the Koran is devoted to killing for the sake of Allah. He also claimed that many sayings of the Prophet Muhammad concern jihad.

  Contacts he made in Britain are said to have later given training and logistical support to terror plots. The plots named include 7/7, 21/7 and the 2006 attempt to smuggle liquid bomb-making substances onto transatlantic airlines. Rashid Rauf, who was implicated in that 2006 aircraft plot, was married to a relative of Azhar.

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• 4. Captured in Kashmir

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  Early in 1994, Azhar reached Srinagar under a fake identity. His errand was to ease tensions between two feuding factions of Harkat-ul-Ansar, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

  In February, Indian forces arrested him at Khanabal, near Anantnag. At the moment of arrest, he declared: "Soldiers of Islam have come from 12 countries to liberate Kashmir. We will answer your carbines with rocket launchers."

  India held him in three places in turn. The first was the Badami Bagh Cantonment in Srinagar, the second was Tihar Jail in Delhi, and the last was Kot Balwal Jail in Jammu.

  In July 1995, six foreign tourists were kidnapped in Jammu and Kashmir. The kidnappers called themselves Al-Faran, a pseudonym of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Their demands included the release of Masood Azhar. One hostage escaped, and another was found decapitated in August. The remaining captives were never seen or heard from again after 1995. The FBI interrogated Azhar several times in jail about the kidnappings.

  A 1998 report by the American Central Intelligence Agency described the group, which it called HuA, as an extremist organisation that Pakistan supports in its proxy war against Indian forces in Kashmir. The report said the group was increasingly using terrorist tactics against Westerners and in random attacks on civilians. It also said HuA had abducted at least 13 people between early 1994 and 1998, and 12 of them came from western countries. The jail at Kot Balwal would be the place from which Azhar finally walked out.

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• 5. The Kandahar Exchange

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  In December 1999, Indian Airlines Flight 814, known as IC814, left Kathmandu in Nepal bound for New Delhi and was hijacked. After being flown to several locations, it landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Kandahar was then controlled by the Taliban, who were supported by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

  Masood Azhar was one of three militants whom the hijackers demanded in exchange for the hostages. The Indian government freed him. Ajit Doval and others criticised the decision as a "diplomatic failure." One complaint was that neither the foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, nor the foreign secretary, Lalit Mansingh, had reached anyone of consequence. As a result, the Indian ambassador could not even get inside the Abu Dhabi airport.

  The hijackers were led by Azhar's own brother, Ibrahim Athar. Another brother, the younger Abdul Rauf Azhar, had planned the operation. The IPS officer S. P. Vaid supervised Azhar's release from the Kot Bhalwal jail. Once Azhar was handed over to the hijackers, they fled into Pakistani territory. Pakistan had said the hijackers would be arrested if found. It had also indicated beforehand that Azhar could return home, since he faced no charges there.

  Shortly after his release, Azhar addressed an estimated 10,000 people in Karachi. He told them: "I have come here because this is my duty to tell you that Muslims should not rest in peace until we have destroyed India." He vowed to liberate the Kashmir region from Indian rule.

  Still in 1999, the United States proscribed Harkat-ul-Ansar and added it to its list of banned terrorist organisations. The ban forced the group to rename itself Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Azhar, however, was already planning an outfit of his own.

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• 6. Jaish-e-Mohammed

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  Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden all reportedly helped Azhar launch Jaish-e-Mohammed, or JeM. So did several Sunni sectarian organisations based in Pakistan. The group is run by Azhar's family like a family enterprise. The Jamia Binoria madrasa linked it with the Afghan Taliban.

  On the 13th of December 2001, attackers struck the Parliament of India in New Delhi. They belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, both Pakistan-based groups. Five attackers died, along with six Delhi Police personnel, two Parliament Security Service personnel and a gardener, making 14 dead in total. The attack brought India and Pakistan to the brink of full-scale war and led to the 2001-02 India-Pakistan standoff.

  On the 29th of December 2001, Pakistani authorities detained Azhar for a year after diplomatic pressure from India and the international community. He was never formally charged. The Lahore High Court ordered an end to his house arrest on the 14th of December 2002, to India's fury. He was never arrested again after that.

  On the 7th of December 2008, a claim emerged that he was among several people arrested after a military raid on a camp outside Muzaffarabad, linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Pakistan's government denied arresting him and said it did not know where he was. He continued to live in Bahawalpur. On the 26th of January 2014, he reappeared after two years of seclusion and addressed a rally in Muzaffarabad. He called for the resumption of jihad in Kashmir. In March 2014, a JeM spokesperson claimed he was in Srinagar.

  Indian agencies say the 2016 attack on an air base at Pathankot was masterminded by Azhar and his brother Abdul Rauf Azhar. They are said to have stayed in direct touch with the attackers even after the assault began. India handed over dossiers of evidence and sought a second red corner notice from Interpol.

  On the 14th of February 2019, a suicide bomber in a vehicle attacked a convoy carrying security personnel on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, at Lethpora near Awantipora in Pulwama district. The blast killed 44 Central Reserve Police Force personnel along with the attacker. Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility. Azhar is said to have approved the attack from a Pakistani Army hospital, where he was in protective custody. France, the United Kingdom and the United States then moved a proposal at the UN Security Council to ban him.

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• 7. Money and Loss

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  Indian intelligence reports from 2025 describe a network of digital wallets used to fund Jaish-e-Mohammed. The wallets ran through platforms such as EasyPaisa and SadaPay. They were allegedly managed by Azhar's son Abdullah Azhar, his brother Talha Al Saif and other senior JeM figures.

  According to the reports, money was first collected in primary wallets and then spread across many secondary accounts. Around 30 new wallets were created each month to avoid detection. The reports called the method a form of "digital hawala." They said it paid for arms purchases, operational costs and the support of Azhar's family. They also said Pakistan's intelligence agency reportedly helped move JeM's funding onto these platforms.

  On the 7th of May 2025, India fired missiles at terrorist camps in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack. The targets included a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in Bahawalpur. Azhar reported the loss of ten family members. They were his older sister and her husband, a nephew and the nephew's wife, a niece, and five children from his family. He did not list his brother Abdul Rauf Azhar among the dead.

  In September 2025, the JeM commander Masood Ilyas Kashmiri spoke at the Mission Mustafa Conference. He said Azhar's family had been "torn into pieces" by Indian forces in the strikes on the group's headquarters in Bahawalpur. He added that they died despite their "sacrifices" in what he called a jihad to protect Pakistan's borders. His words were a rare public acknowledgment of the strike's impact. A separate note attributed the deaths of ten family members and four close associates to a strike on Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah.

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• 8. Sanctions and China

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  The United States Treasury barred Americans from engaging in any transactions with three Pakistan-based militants and a front group. The front group, Al Rehmat Trust, was called an operational front for Jaish-e-Mohammed. Azhar himself was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, for acting on behalf of the group.

  The United Nations proved harder. Starting in 2009, there were four attempts to place Azhar on the Security Council's counter-terrorism sanctions list. China vetoed every one, citing a lack of evidence. In October 2016, China again blocked India's appeal to the United Nations to label him a terrorist.

  In February 2017, China blocked a United States move to have Azhar banned. The most recent attempt came on the 13th of March 2019, and the blockade held once more. Then, in May 2019, China pulled back its objection. The Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee listed Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, and the UN Security Council recorded the listing on the 1st of May 2019.

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