KARACHI, 30 September 2004 — The top Pakistani militant killed in a weekend raid had taken direct orders from the feared Libyan Al-Qaeda operative Abu Faraj Farj, a senior police commander said yesterday.
“Amjad Farooqi was the main link between Pakistani militants and Al-Qaeda’s Abu Farj,” Syed Kamal Shah, the police chief of southern Sindh province, told AFP. Farooqi was shot dead during a raid by paramilitary forces in a rural Sindh town on Sunday morning, ending a nationwide manhunt for the man accused of masterminding plots under Al-Qaeda’s direction to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Farj is described by Pakistani intelligence agencies as Al-Qaeda’s new operations chief and he has been linked to the two assassination attempts against Musharraf last December.
“Farooqi has been taking orders from Farj and was operating as per directives from him,” Shah said. Investigators also say Farooqi, 30, took part in the kidnap of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and recruited the trio of Arab men who beheaded him in January 2002. Farooqi was indicted over Pearl’s death but had eluded capture.
Pakistani security forces are hoping that 13 militants arrested since the raid will lead them to Farj. “It’s difficult to say at this stage that we would be able to get Farj, but interrogators are questioning Farooqi’s two accomplices in order to break the network,” Shah said. Two militants who had been hiding with Farooqi were captured in the Sunday raid and another 11 have been arrested since the weekend.
“Those arrested as a result of the interrogation of the two accomplices may also help the security agencies to avert further acts of terrorism,” the police chief said. “It’s one of the biggest breakthroughs in the ongoing war on terror.”
The 13 detainees, all Pakistanis, include a suspect in the May 2002 suicide car bomb attack which killed 11 French naval technicians outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel. Shah said further arrests were likely. Farooqi was considered Al-Qaeda’s key recruiter and operator in Pakistan.
Soldier Killed in Land Mine Blast
A Pakistani soldier was killed and four others were wounded in a land mine explosion yesterday in a tribal region near Afghan border, officials said, the third such incident in as many days.
A military spokesman said a vehicle in a security forces convoy hit a land mine in South Waziristan tribal region. South Waziristan has been scene of fierce clashes between the security forces and hundreds of Al-Qaeda-linked foreign militants and their local allies in recent months. At least two Pakistani troops were killed and four wounded on Tuesday when they stepped on a land mine in the region.
