'Zero tolerance for extremism': Fake Taliban Twitter handle targets Malala

A controversial tweet allegedly by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan(TTP)terrorist who had reportedlyshot and wounded Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai in 2012 threatened her in a tweet saying, "We will end what we had started this time around."

“Come back to your original home in Swat, we have special unfinished business with you [Malala] and your father. We will end what we had started this time around,”Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan's(TTP)Ehsanullah Ehsan allegedly wrote.

Malala retorted asking the Pakistan government and the military: "This is the ex-spokesperson of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan who claims responsibility for the attack on me and many innocent people. He is now threatening people on social media. How did he escape?"

However, Dr Arslan Khalid, focal person to PM Imran Khan on digital mediasaid: "It's a fake account and there is zero tolerance for extremism in Pakistan."

"Have forwarded this fakeaccount to authorities and Twitter as such miscreants using fake accounts and spreading hate shouldn't be allowed on any social media platform," Khalid added.

Twitter moved quickly to permanently suspend the account after the threatening post. Taliban's Ehsanullah Ehsan was arrested in 2017 but had escaped in 2020 from a Pakistan safe house while in the custody of Pakistani intelligence.

The Pakistan-Taliban spokesman has been accused of carrying out the 2014 attack on a Pakistani Army public school in which 134 mostly children were killed.

Ehsan had claimed responsibility for the 2012 shooting of Malala in Swat Valley. A gunman had walked up to Yousafzai on a school bus in which she was travelling, asked her name and then fired three bullets. Malala who was 15 at the time survived the attack and shifted to the UK. Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai was a teacher in Swat Valley.

Malala who is a strident campaigner for girl's education had recently urged the Boris Johnson government not to cut overseas aid. In a tweet on Tuesday, Malala had reminded UK finance minister Rishi Sunak and PM Johnson of the 0.7 per cent pledge, renewed in last year's Conservative election manifesto, saying: "When you announce spending priorities... I hope you'll deliver on that promise."

Yousafzai had also recently tweeted over the brutal killings of Hazara miners. "I request that PM @ImranKhanPTI meet with the victims' families as soon as possible," she had said.