LAHORE: Police have arrested two men for suspected links with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed militant outfit, and Qari Asad, who is in police custody and is stated to be the right hand of Omar Saeed Sheikh, a convict in the murder case of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Daily Times has learnt. Sources said the arrested men were suspected of involvement in Daniel Pearl’s murder as well as other terrorist activities. One of the suspects, Hafiz Naveed, was arrested from his house in Shadbagh on Friday night.
| They've been looking for him for a year? I hope he wasn't home watching teevee all that while, but I suspect he was — when he wasn't out doing other things. |
On the basis of information extracted from him, police arrested the other suspect, Hafiz Shafique, from his house at Tibba Azeem Chowk in Ghoray Shah. Sources said police had also recovered one Kalashnikov and one pump action gun from Shafique’s house. Both suspects were taken to the CIA, Kotwali, from where they were shifted to Multan, sources added.
| They took his remote, too. Those Pak cops are tough... |
Sources said police had arrested Qari Asad for his involvement in the Daniel Pearl case. Sources said police believed that Asad had aided and abetted Pearl’s killers and had close links with Al Qaeda and Taliban. After his arrest, Asad was produced before Dera Ghazi Khan District and Sessions Judge Abdul Latif Qureshi, who was later notified as an acting judge of the Anti Terrorism Court, DG Khan on Friday. The judge allowed Asad’s three-day physical remand for interrogations.
| "Ahmed, you ain't gonna wear that turban to an interrogation, are you? Here, try this fez..." |
Sources said Asad was also accused of masterminding several acts of terrorism in different parts of the country and training about 1,500 Qaeda and Taliban activists in the last nine years. Sources said he had disappeared to Afghanistan after a bomb exploded at the Shehr-e-Sultan Imam Bargah in January 1994. Six persons were killed in the blast.
| "Then I looked around me, and — Thhhhppp! — he was gone!" |
Sources said police, following a tip of Qari Asad, arrested a terrorist Kashif alias Chota Usman, who was involved in two incidents of sectarian killings in Bahawalpur, from Lahore a few days ago. During interrogation, Kashif pointed out that one Faisal was his close aide and police also arrested him from Lahore, said sources, adding on Faisal’s tip, police arrest Hafiz Naveed. |