Despite the country's willingness to admit it publically, Pakistan's link with terror outfits has been nothing but a secret.

Now one of the top authority figures in Pakistan himself has come out accusing the political and religious parties in the country of backing extremists.

Pakistan Today

Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Anwar Zaheer Jamali said that political and religious parties’ contacts with terror elements should be exposed. He said these subversive elements are being supported by parties for their personal interests. Jamali added that judicial institutions of Pakistan are facing terrorists’ attacks.

His comments on Monday, a day after the terror attack in Uri was in the context of the recent terror attacks in his country targeting the legal system.

Earlier this month a suicide bomber had attacked a court in the northern Pakistani city of Mardan, killing at least 12 people and injuring more than 50 others.

Last month a some 70 people, most of them lawyers were killed in a blast in Balochistan's capital Quetta when terrorists targeted a hospital in the city. The lawyers had assembled there after one of their colleague was killed earlier in the day.

While a number of Pakistani politicians have known to have links to extremist groups the most prominent of them was Malik Ishaq, the founder of a sunni terror group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Ishaq who was killed by Pakistan police in a shootout in 2014 after he tried to escape custody was planning to contest Parliamentary elections.

EPA

Another prominent extremist figure in Pakistan who enjoyed political patronage was Mumtaz Qadri, a former special forces guard turned assassin who was hanged for the murder of Punjab governor Salman Taseer.

Reuters

Qadri was hailed a hero after he killed Taseer accusing him of blasphemy.

He was defended in the court by a elite panel of lawyers including a former judge of the Supreme court. After he was hanged in 2015, some religious parties came out into the streets almost bringing the capital Islamabad to a standstill.