TTP appoints Sajna as Mehsud’s successor

ISLAMABAD (PAN (TTP) head on Saturday, the day his predecessor Hakimullah Mehsud was laid to rest, local officials said.

Mehsud was killed along with several close associates in a US drone strike in the Dande Darpakhel area near Miranshah, the North Waziristan Agency headquarters, on Friday.

Sajna had previously been elevated as TTP’s second-in-command after the killing of Waliur Rehman Mehsud in a similar strike on May 29, 2013. He was born in the Sararogh area of South Waziristan.

The appointment of TTP’s new chief came at a meeting of its Central Advisory Council. Most of the council members were present at the meeting held at an undisclosed location.

Of the 60 members attending the Shura, 43 voted for and 17 others against Sajna, according to a TTP source, who said that the election had not been endorsed by splinter groups of the outlawed organisation.

The incoming TTP leader, 36, reportedly spearheaded the attack on a naval base in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi besides masterminding a 2012 jailbreak that led to the escape of hundreds of militants in Bannu district.

A Pakistani newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying: “Sajna has no basic education.”

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