Pakistan caretaker PM adds terrorist Yasin Malik's wife in cabinet as special assistant

In a move that is likely to ruffle feathers within the Indian establishment, Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar on Thursday (Aug 17) added jailed terrorist Yasin Malik's wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick to his 19-member Cabinet.

Notably, this is the first time that a leader from Pakistani-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) has been included in the federal government.

Mushaal is not a full-time minister rather she would work as a special assistant to the prime minister on human rights. A full or deputy minister has to be a Pakistani national while special assistants can be dual nationals.

The newly appointed interim cabinet members were sworn-in earlier in the day at a ceremony held at Aiwan-e-Sadr in Islamabad. President Arif Alvi administered the oath of the interim cabinet ministers.

Mushaal met Yasin 2005

Mushaal is from PoK and is married to Indian Kashmiriseparatist leader Yasin Malik, who was recently convicted by the Indian court on terrorism charges.

She married Yasin in Rawalpindi on February 22, 2009. According to reports, the two met when Yasin was on a tour of Pakistan in 2005.

Mushaal studied from the London School of Economics. Her mother Rehana Hussein Mullick was the secretary general of PML-N Women’s Wing, while her father MA Hussein Mullick was an international economist who headed the University of Bonn’s economics department and was the first Pakistani member of a Nobel Prize jury.

Her brother Haider Ali Hussein Mullick is a foreign policy analyst based in Washington, DC, and is currently a lecturer at the Naval Post Graduate School. Her sister, Sabien Hussein Mullick, is a social worker.

Mashaal lives with her daughter Raziyah Sultana, 12, in Islamabad.

Yasin serving life sentence

On May 19, 2022, a court in the capital New Delhi convicted Yasin Malik in a case related to alleged terrorism and secessionist activities in the Kashmir Valley in 2016-17. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Malik pleaded guilty to the charges framed against him. He told the court that he was not contesting the charges levelled against him including sections 16 (terrorist act), 17 (raising funds for the terrorist act), 18 (conspiracy to commit terrorist act) and 20 (being a member of a terrorist gang or organisation) of the UAPA and sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 124-A (sedition) of the IPC.

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