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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Pakistan's Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Details Recent Anti-Terror Arrests |
| 2004-08-08 |
| From Associated Press / Yahoo News The torrent of intelligence that led to dozens of arrests in Pakistan and Britain and a terror warning in the United States began with a hunt for those behind an audacious ambush in June on a Pakistani commander as his motorcade tried to cross Karachi's Clifton Bridge. ... The gunmen escaped after the June 10 attack on Ahsan Saleem Hayat, Karachi's top general, but police traced them through a stolen van found abandoned and bloodstained later that day. The general escaped unharmed; 10 other people died in the attack. The van's owner gave police a description of the men who had stolen it, and that led them to a militant hideout in Karachi where on June 12 they arrested nine people, including alleged ringleader Atta-ur Rahman and another man, a young Pakistani named Shahzad Bajwa. The men, part of a previously unknown group called Jundallah, or Allah's Brigade, are also believed to have been involved in recent attacks on Shiite Muslim mosques in Karachi. Both Rahman and Bajwa received training in October and November of 2003 in South Waziristan at an alleged al-Qaida facility and shooting range on the property of tribal leader Eda Khan. The camp near Shakai, a town of mud-brick compounds surrounded by mountains and forests, was overrun by the army in June following the arrests in Karachi. Eda Khan surrendered and is in custody. On June 12, police and intelligence agents in Karachi also arrested Masrab Arochi, a nephew of al-Qaida's former No. 3 Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and a suspected terror operative himself, [Interior Minister Faisal Saleh] Hayyat told the AP. Hayyat said Arochi, Rahman and Bajwa had all been to Shakai, which he described as "a major transit point" for al-Qaida figures. .... Pakistani intelligence officials say the CIA cooperated in the Arochi arrest, as well as those that followed. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |