The air strike on Saturday, May 21, that allegedly killed Mansour was perhaps the most high-profile USA incursion into Pakistan since the 2011 raid to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and sparked a protest by Islamabad that its sovereignty had been violated.
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A Pakistani officer says police have registered a case against unknown USA officials, seeking to press murder charges over a May 21 drone strike that killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour and a driver.
Whilst Afghan Taliban rejected direct talks with the Afghan government immediately after the killing of Mansour, the breakaway Taliban faction led by Mullah Muhammad Rasool has expressed the willingness to hold talks with the Afghan government.
Mansour had entered Pakistan from Iran using a false name and fake Pakistani identity documents on May 21, when his auto was targeted by a US drone.
His four children are very young, and he was the family’s sole breadwinner…
He said the family was seeking financial compensation from American and Pakistani authorities to support Azam’s family and fund his children’s education.
Permitting a lawsuit against individual officials “under the circumstances of this case would impermissibly draw the court into ‘the heart of executive and military planning and deliberation, ‘ ” said U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer in 2014. His claims were not independently verifiable.
On Sunday, the interior ministry had confirmed Mansour’s death after a DNA report said the man killed in the drone strike was the chief of the Afghan Taliban. Top cleric, Maulvi Haibatullah Akhundzada, was chosen as the new chief in a swift transition of power after officially confirming the death of Mansour.
“DNA of Mansoor matched with one of his relative who came to receive his body from Afghanistan”.
In 2015, the Taliban had started to fight themselves from within after it was revealed that former leader, Mullah Omar, had been dead for two years and Mansour had been running the militant group in his name only.
Significantly, it was the first ever USA drone strike in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, despite years of American bombing runs on al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has always insisted that attacks on its soil are a violation of its sovereignty.
The attack and strong message from the United States also encouraged the Afghan government to set aside their soft wordings and issue a strong warning to the Taliban “to end violence and resume peaceful life; else they will face the fate of their leadership”.
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Drone attacks have proven extremely controversial with the Pakistani public and rights groups. President Barack Obama acknowledged in April that innocent civilians have been killed in USA drone strikes, which are carried out throughout the world, despite intelligence on targets being “triple-checked.” .
