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Jemaah sleeper cells unearthed in Pakistan
Explaination for arrests at religious schools. EFL:More than a dozen foreign students detained in Pakistan and now under interrogation were "sleeping cells" of the alleged Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the interior ministry sources said yesterday. Authorities disclosed that the crackdown in the southern port city the previous day, when 13 Malaysian and two Indonesian youths were detained took place after the man accused in the Bali bomb blast pointed to the sleeper cells in Pakistanâs commercial capital. The 15 will be deported to their countries after interrogation. To face even more interrogation. Meanwhile, Indonesiaâs acting consul general in Karachi said that the detainees, Gungun Rusman Gunawan and Saifuddin, both students at the Abu Bakar school, are from Indonesiaâs main Java island. A senior source in the interior ministry clarified that the South East Asian students were taken into custody from Abu Bakar religious school in Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighbourhood in Karachi, a known hub of hundreds of seminaries. "We acted after receiving information about the presence of the sleeping cell of Jemaah Islamiyah in Karachi from the two governments, which has been alerted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation," a security official said. The official said the ongoing interrogation revealed that four of the detained students had direct links with Hambali, suspected kingpin of JI, which is blamed for the deadly Bali bombing in Indonesia and a string of other attacks. Rusman Gunawan may be Hambaliâs little brother. "The youths arrested in Karachi are not known to have been involved in any major terrorist incident in the past but they have told interrogators they were planning some attacks in the region," the Pakistani security official said. Describing the Karachi roundup as another significant step in the fight against international terrorism, a senior interior ministry official said their disclosures would he greatly helpful in tracking other such elements that might be lurking in seminaries elsewhere in the country. "These foreign students had been staying in Karachi for quite sometime," the official said, without disclosing exactly when they arrived in Karachi and the name of the school where they had board and lodging. As part of its campaign to purge seminaries of undesirable or unauthorised foreigner inmates the Pakistan government has previously forced many students to leave the country. To make room for their local nutcase students. Posted by: Steve 2003-09-22 |
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