Paper no. 1028	15.06.2004
ARRESTS OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS IN KARACHI By B.Raman.    The paramilitary Rangers of Karachi   announced on June 14,2004, the arrest of one Dawood Badini , said to be of the Sunni extremist  Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), on a charge of being responsible for  two suicide bombings in Quetta in Balochistan  in the last two years, which killed over 100 Shias, many of them belonging to the Hazara tribe.They claimed that he was also responsible for the assassination of 12 Shia police recruits in Quetta on June 8 last year. They have projected him as  the kingpin of the LEJ  network in Balochistan. 2. Separately,eight suspects allegedly  involved in the  attack on the convoy of Lt-Gen Ahsan Saleem Hyat, the Karachi Corps Commander,  on June 10 and one suspect (Gul Hasan of the LEJ) allegedly involved in organising suicide attacks on Shias in the Hyderi mosque and Imambargah Ali Raza of Karachi  last month were produced before the Karachi Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on June 14. It remanded them to police custody for two weeks. 3.The eight suspects said to have been involved in the attack on the convoy of the Corps Commander were described by the Police as belonging to a hitherto unknown organisation called Jundullah (Army of Allah).They are:   Ata-ur-Rehman alias Ibrahim alias Umer alias Uzair Ahmed, described as the Amir of the Jundullah. Shahzad Ahmed Bajwa,described as the deputy Amir. Shoaib Siddiqui, Yaqoob Seed Khan alias Roomi, Uzair Ahmed alias Kashif, Danish Imam alias Shami, Najeebullah alias Atif, Khurram Shaif alias Anas. 4.The Police claimed to have recovered a large quantity of arms and ammunition from them and alleged that they were also responsible for other terrorist incidents in Karachi before June 10. They also claimed that amongst the weapons recovered from them were three snatched from the security detachment accompanying the Corps Commander. 5.“The Jundullah group is a new terror group which has links with Al Qaeda, and their members have been trained in Wana, (the capital of South Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas ),” the Inspector-General of Police of Karachi Kamal Shah told reporters. He said that at least 20 members of the Jundullah had been identified and there could be more.They were  all from Karachi. According to the Police, Attaur Rehman had a masters degree in statistics from the Karachi University. 6.While the arrests of the eight members of the Jundullah have been  projected by Faisal Saleh Hayat,  the Pakistani Interior Minister,  as a "phenomenal break-through in the war against terrorism", many in Karachi are still skeptic about the importance of these arrests and their role in the attack on the convoy of the Corps Commander. In support of their skepticism, they point out that immediately after the ambush, eye-witnesses had described the terrorists who ambushed the convoy as clean-shaven. The terrorists had hijacked the car which they used for the ambush from some persons, who had also described the hijackers as clean-shaven. After examining them and the eye-witnesses, the Police had disseminated sketches of the wanted suspects, which also showed them as clean shaven.But,  the suspects of  the Jundullah produced before the court had beards.The Police have not been able to explain this discrepancy. 7.Moreover, initially, the Karachi Police described the arrested suspects as belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (Al Alami meaning International), but, subsequently, they started describing them as members of a new group called the Jundullah, which had been trained by the Uzbeck elements belonging to  Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) in South Waziristan in October-November last year. While Interior Minister Hayat described the eight remanded suspects, including their leader, as of Central Asian origin, the Karachi Police have described them as Pakistanis belonging to Karachi. 8.On the night of June 13, the Interior Minister also announced the arrest by the Karachi Police of one Massob Arooshi, described as the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), who used to be projected by the Americans as the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the USA. Masoob Arooshi was reportedly arrested  from the house of  one Abbas Khan, a former divisional engineer  of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, who is stated to be the  father of Javed Abbas, a serving Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) of  Sindh. 9.According to the "Daily Times", the presitgious daily of Lahore, a Shia cleric from Gilgit working in Karachi tipped off the police about the presence of Arooshi in the house of Abbas Khan. The paper said that it was another Shia cleric, who had tipped off the Police in March last year about the presence of KSM in Rawalpindi. KSM was arrested by the Pakistani authorities from the house of a leader of the women's wing of the Jammat-e-Islami (JEI), with relatives in the Army. It is not known whether Abbas Khan also belonged to the JEI. 10.Since last year, I have been pointing out in my articles that the upsurge of attacks on Shias in Karachi, Gilgit and Balochistan was related to the US-led hunt for the dregs of Al Qaeda and that the anti-Shia incidents were in retaliation for their suspected co-operation with the US intelligence agencies and for their role in assisting the US agencies in the arrest of KSM.I had also mentioned that the Shias, particularly the Hazaras of Balochistan, were helping the US agencies in retaliation for the massacre of the Hazaras of Afghanistan by the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the LEJ before 9/11. 11.In this connection, attention is invited to my article on the massacre of the Hazaras of Quetta in July last year at http://www.saag.org/papers8/paper731.html  in which I had said: "The  arrests of Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Waleed bin Attash, a suspect in the case relating to the attack on the US naval ship USS Cole at Aden in October, 2000, in April in Karachi, and two other dregs of Al Qaeda made the Al Qaeda leadership suspect that the Shia members of the Hazara community in Balochistan and of the Kashmiri community in Gilgit in the Northern Areas (NA) had been collaborating with the US intelligence in its hunt for the dregs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. While the Shia Hazaras had grounds for anger against Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the reasons mentioned above, the Shia Kashmiris had grounds for anger due to the role played by bin Laden and his Sunni tribal supporters in helping the Pakistan army in ruthlessly suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit in 1988, resulting in hundreds of deaths of the local Shias." 12.Masoob Arooshi has surprisingly not been produced before the court and his police remand sought. This has given rise to speculation that he may be handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the USA and flown out to Diego Garcia for interrogation, if not already done. 13. Many in Karachi claim that Masoob Arooshi was actually arrested on a tip off by the US authorities, who,in turn, got their information from the Shia cleric.They say the Shias suspect that the Pakistani Police is mixed up with the LEJ and other elements of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF)  and would not, therefore, take their information to the Pakistani Police. They would prefer giving their information to US officials since they feel that the US officials would ensure that the person pointed out by them is arrested by the Pakistani authorities. 14.Different officials have given the  name of the so-called nephew of KSM  differently as Musaad Uroshi, Masoob Arooshi, and Mosad Aruchi. 15.Interestingly, after the arrests in Karachi, the Pakistani authorities announced the end of the joint operations by the Army and the Air Force against the dregs of Al Qaeda and the IIF in the South Waziristan area with effect from June 14.. According to official accounts, the operations, which started on June 8, had resulted in the death of 55 suspected terrorists and 19 members of the security forces. The Pakistani officials have projected those killed and captured as of Central Asian origin. Other reports of the intense fighting in the area also speak of the involvement of Uighurs from the Xinjiang province of China in the fighting against the Army. 16.According to Police sources, about 50 to 100 Uighurs from the Xinjiang province trained by Uzbeck and Chechen elements of the IIF have joined hands with the Uzbecks and Chechens in their fight against the Pakistan Army. It is said that it is groups from these Uighurs that were responsible for the recent attacks on Chinese engineers in the Gwadar area of Balochistan and near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. The two incidents resulted in the death of 15 Chinese engineers. 17.It is reported that faced with severe repression by the Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang province which made any operations by them inside Xinjiang impossible,they have decided to attack Chinese nationals in Afghanistan and Pakistan in retaliation for the repression in Xinjiang. It is not known to which organisation they belong. More  attacks on soft Chinese targets are likely. (15-6-04) (The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )
Back to the top Home  | Papers  | Notes  | Forum  | Search  | Feedback  | Links Copyright © South Asia Analysis Group  All rights reserved. Permission is given to refer this on-line document for use in research papers and articles, provided the source and the author's name  are acknowledged. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes.