ISLAMABAD, 25 October 2006 — Pakistani authorities have arrested three Al-Qaeda suspects, one of them son of a retired brigadier for masterminding attempted rocket attacks near the president’s house and other sites, police said yesterday.

The suspects were seized on Monday, based on information provided by eight alleged militants detained earlier this month after the three foiled attacks, Islamabad Inspector General of police Iftikhar Ahmed Chaudhry said.

“They are educated. One of them is son of a retired army brigadier, one of them is an engineer who was technically aware of making circuits,” Chaudhry told AFP. “They are hard-core terrorists.” Police said they picked up the men — named only as Ali Ahmed, Muneer and Khalil — in the industrial sector of the capital Islamabad when officers intercepted a car. They were still being interrogated.

The trio was the driving force behind the plot and the eight others arrested previously were only facilitators, senior superintendent of police Sikandar Hayat said.

“This is the core group. We can call them masterminds,” he said.

The men “appear to be Al-Qaeda-linked militants,” Hayat added, echoing earlier comments by President Pervez Musharraf saying that the plot had links to fugitive Osama Bin Laden’s terror network.

“They were inspired by Al-Qaeda. They had Al-Qaeda literature in their car,” Hayat said without elaborating.

He did not specify which was the brigadier’s son but said Ali likely had a master’s degree in engineering.

One rocket exploded late on Oct. 4 in the Ayub public park in Rawalpindi, a garrison city adjoining Islamabad, near Musharraf’s army residence. Another three were found nearby.

Two more rockets were found close to the official presidency building and Parliament in Islamabad on Oct. 5, followed by another two near the intelligence service headquarters in the capital two days later.

Militants had planned to launch all of them simultaneously but only the one in Rawalpindi worked, Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao has said. Security forces traced the suspects by decoding mobile phones attached to shells.

Police seized more of the Russian-made rockets plus grenades, explosives and hundreds of sniper rifle rounds at the same time as they detained the initial eight suspects.

Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, has said that the rockets “maybe” targeted at him. He has escaped at least three serious assassination attempts in the past, two of which were in Rawalpindi, both in December 2003.

In the first, junior Pakistan Air Force personnel with militant links blew up a bridge as his motorcade passed but Musharraf was saved when electronic jamming equipment in his car delayed the blast.

The second attempt on Christmas Day was a suicide attack linked to Al-Qaeda that left 14 people dead.

Suicide Cases on the Increase

There has been an alarming increase in the number of suicide cases in Pakistan. During the first nine months of this year, 5,800 people committed suicide. The figures compiled by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan for the period — January 2006 to September 2006 — said street crime in the country was on the increase.

Incidents of cell phone snatching at gunpoint has become common in major cities including Karachi, Lahore, Hyderabad and Rawalpindi. “Many people were murdered when they resisted,” the HRCP said in its report.

It said, “An average of 2,500 cell phones are taken away every day.”

The commission report said 350 people were killed in police custody. About violence against women it said 2,100 rape cases were reported while 3,100 children were victims of sexual harassment.

The report further said over 90,000 prisoners were detained at 87 jails. More than 21 journalists were maltreated by security forces.