KARACHI, 17 July 2004 — Some two dozen Al-Qaeda-trained militants are still hiding in Pakistan’s restive port city of Karachi which has been hit by a series of deadly attacks over the past two years, a top police official said.
They plot attacks while their subsidiary cells provide logistical support and identify targets, police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) chief Javed Ali Bukhari told AFP.
“They do not operate as a single group but they may be heading small cells of 10 to 20 people each,” Bukhari said in an interview in the Pakistani commercial capital.
Security forces have so far arrested some 200 suspects in an ongoing crackdown since late 2001, Bukhari said.
“Our investigations with the arrested people and our own intelligence reports suggest the presence of these 24 Al-Qaeda-trained terrorists operating in Karachi.” He said the 24 were the top of a three-tier operational hierarchy. “The second tier provides logistic support and pinpoints potential targets while the third tier is made up of extremely motivated executioners.” He said the cells operated in small groups and had no central command structure.
Security officials are unable to determine the strength of the second and third tiers but Bukhari said they were all believed to be “well trained in using explosives in telephone sets, mobile phones and video cassettes by improvising available remote systems for cars and televisions sets.”
Karachi has long been suspected to be a hide-out for Al-Qaeda operatives and extremists unhappy over the government’s decision to abandon the then Taleban regime in neighboring Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the US.
A hotbed of extremists, Karachi’s crowded apartment blocks have been used by several senior Al-Qaeda fugitives, including alleged Sept. 11 planners Ramzi bin Al-Shaibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
Al-Shaibh was arrested in a Karachi apartment on the first anniversary of the attacks, while Sheikh Mohammad was captured in March 2003 in Rawalpindi. Half of the port city’s 14 million population lives in densely populated slums which “provide an ideal hiding place for them,” Bukhari added.
May and early June saw a surge in violence here with two suicide attacks on Shiite mosques, a double car bomb attack near the US consul general’s residence, a parcel bomb, assassination of a top Sunni cleric and three days of riots which claimed 51 lives.
An attack on a convoy carrying Karachi’s top army commander, Lt. Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat on June 10 left 11 people dead, including seven soldiers. The general escaped unhurt.
A suicide car bomb in June 2002 killed 12 Pakistani bystanders and guards outside the US consulate here while a similar attack killed 11 French naval engineers in May 2002.
Bukhari said police were checking whether six militant organizations, outlawed by President Pervez Musharraf after the Sept. 11 attacks, were still recruiting.
“We have lately started a survey to collect facts whether militant groups are recruiting more people, but so far I cannot say for sure whether the number of motivated militants is on the rise or decreasing,” Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil confirmed.
Jamil said militants were also trying to hide in refugee camps, where about half a million Afghans who fled the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan are sheltered.
“We have reports about the presence of some Chechen and Uzbek militants in the Afghan refugee camps,” he said.
Court Asks Prosecutors for Charges Against Two Doctors
A court yesterday asked prosecutors to submit their final charges in the next 10 days against two doctors accused of being linked to Al-Qaeda, officials said.
The doctors are suspected of also having links to a local terror group involved in last month’s attack on a military convoy which killed 11 people.
Dr. Akmal Waheed, a renowned heart specialist, and his brother Dr. Arshad Waheed, an orthopaedic surgeon, were arrested in Karachi early this month. The pair have been in police custody since July 3 and are suspected of giving medical treatment to Al-Qaeda militants, including foreigners.
Police have accused them of belonging to Jund Allah, or Army of God, an organization with links to Al-Qaeda fighters hiding in the South Waziristan tribal region near the border with Afghanistan.
“The judge has asked us to submit a final chargesheet against the suspects on July 26,” public prosecutor Maula Bux Bhatti told reporters.
