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US Congressman urges Biden to reject Imran Khan's pick as next Pak ambassador

Congressman Scott Perry said Masood Khan, who has been selected by the Imran Khan government as the next envoy to the US, has praised both terrorists and foreign terrorist organisations, including Hizbul Mujahideen.

Updated on: Jan 31, 2022, 17:04:01 IST
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US Congressman Scott Perry has written to President Joe Biden urging him to reject Masood Khan as the next ambassador from Pakistan.

File photos of US President Joe Biden and Pakistan PM Imran Khan.
File photos of US President Joe Biden and Pakistan PM Imran Khan.

“While I am encouraged that the State Department has reportedly placed a pause on approving Masood Khan as the new Ambassador from Pakistan, a pause is not enough. I urge you to reject any diplomatic credentials presented to you by Masood Khan and reject any effort by the Government of Pakistan to install this jihadist as Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States,” the Pennsylvania wrote in the letter.

He said the Imran Khan government’s “nomination of a bona fide terrorist sympathiser working to undermine our interests in the region – as well as the security of our Indian allies – can only be described as a breathtaking lack of judgment at best, and a demonstration of Islamabad’s unmitigated contempt for the United States at worst.”

Perry said Khan has praised both terrorists and foreign terrorist organisations, including Hizbul Mujahideen. “He has encouraged young men to emulate jihadists like Burhan Wani, a former commander of Hizbul Mujahideen who dedicated his life to a holy war against India.”

Khan has also on the United States to free would-be mass murderer Aafia Siddiqui. “In 2010, Siddiqui was convicted of attempting to murder American troops. Since then, jihadists have regularly clamored for her release – to include the perpetrator behind the anti-Semitic hostage crisis in Colleyville, Texas earlier this month,” the letter read.

  • Shishir Gupta
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Shishir Gupta

    Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More