(AKI) - Nine militants suspected of links to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were due to appear in a Pakistani court on Friday accused over a string of suicide attacks that killed dozens of people and damaged the Danish embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Police said they arrested the gang earlier this week in the northeastern garrison town of Rawalpindi. The suspects are expected to be charged under anti-terror legislation and held in custody for up to 14 days.The suspects are reportedly wanted chiefly in connection with five high-profile suicide attacks, including one outside the Danish embassy and another on an Italian restaurant in Islamabad. The devastating embassy car bombing on 2 June last year killed six people including a Dane. The blast caused severe damage to a nearby United Nations agency and damaged the embassy building and the residences of the Indian and Dutch ambassadors.
The bombing of the popular Luna Caprese Italian restaurant on 15 March last year killed a female Turkish aid worker and injured at least 10 other foreigners including four American Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI officials.
Police also suspect the gang of helping orchestrate a suicide bombing near the Islamabad's Red Mosque on 7 July last year which killed 19 people, mostly policemen and injured dozens. The gang is also accused over the killing on 25 February last year of Pakistan's chief military medical officer and an attack earlier that month against an army medical corps bus.
Police claim that gang was involved in logistics and providing suicide bombers for targeted attacks, including one on Independence Day in the eastern city of Lahore on 14 August last year and an earlier attack on the Naval War College, also in Lahore.
The Pakistan Observer daily quoted senior police officers as saying the Rawalpindi gang had links to Al-Qaeda's top commander in Pakistan, Usama al-Kini, who was killed in a US missile strike in the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan on 1 January. The gang's ring leader, Mohammed Illyas, also known as Qari Jamil, was identified as a former detainee in the US-run military prison for terrorist suspects, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to an unnamed senior police investigator.