Federal Minister for Information, Fawad Chaudhry, says that the fake threats were sent to New Zealand from India in a press conference on Tuesday.
Fawad Chaudhry spoke about the strict measures taken for the security of the New Zealand cricket team. He also spoke about the fake social media post shared in the name of the former TTP commander Ehsanullah Ehsan in August. “The post stated that New Zealand cricket team should not go to Pakistan as Daesh would attack it,” revealed the information minister.
He said that an article was published in The Sunday Guardian, two days later, on August 21st by the bureau chief, Abhinandan Mishra. The article said that the New Zealand team may get attacked in Pakistan.
#BREAKING: Threatening E mail to @BLACKCAPS was sent from #India using #Singapore VPN: Pakistan.
— Khurrram Shahzad (@KhurramShahzPK) September 22, 2021
“The article published in The Sunday Guardian centered around Ehsanullah Ehsan’s post,” he said. “Indian journalist Abhinandan Mishra has close relations with former Afghan vice-president Amrullah Saleh,” he added.
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The Information Minister said that five days later a threatening email was sent to the email id of Martin Guptil’s wife from the email ID in the name of TTP. The email gave a death threat to the cricketer.
“The email said that Guptill will be killed while on tour in Pakistan,” he said. “After we investigated the ID, it was found that it was created on August 24, 2021, at 01:05 am while the email was sent at 11:59 am on August 25,” he disclosed.
He said that despite all the threats Black Caps did not cancel the tour and arrived in Pakistan following the confirmation that all the threats were fake following the probe by New Zealand and Pakistan’s security agencies.
“I would just like to remind you that both Pakistan and New Zealand’s security agencies had probed and arrived at the conclusion that the threats issued on August 19, 21, and 24 were all fake,” he noted.
“A detailed program containing their protocols and security was issued by the interior ministry, which included the squad being accompanied by two helicopters,” shared the information minister.
Minister said that New Zealand and Pakistan cricket teams had a full practice session on September 13th and 14th under tight security.
On September 17th, New Zealand informed that they have received an email from their government about the security threat to the team. The device used to send the threatening email to the New Zealand government was owned by Om Prakash Mishra, who is based in Mumbai.
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“On September 18, Interpol Wellington told Interpol Islamabad that they have found an email which was generated from a Gmail account of a user named Hamza Afridi at 6;25 New Zealand time. The email threatened the New Zealand team directly with bomb attacks. The ID was created just 15 minutes before the email was sent,” said Chaudhry.
“This email was sent from an associated device in India using VPN, showing the IP address of Singapore,” the minister added. He added that the device had other 13 ids as well. “Only one of these IDs is named Hamza Afridi, just to show that it has been generated from Pakistan,” said the minister.