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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Pakistanis Round Up Sunnis Who Have Attacked Shias |
| 2004-06-16 |
| From South Asia Analysis Group The paramilitary Rangers of Karachi announced on June 14,2004, the arrest of one Dawood Badini , said to be of the Sunni extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), on a charge of being responsible for two suicide bombings in Quetta in Balochistan in the last two years, which killed over 100 Shias, many of them belonging to the Hazara tribe.They claimed that he was also responsible for the assassination of 12 Shia police recruits in Quetta on June 8 last year. They have projected him as the kingpin of the LEJ network in Balochistan. Separately,eight suspects allegedly involved in the attack on the convoy of Lt-Gen Ahsan Saleem Hyat, the Karachi Corps Commander, on June 10 and one suspect (Gul Hasan of the LEJ) allegedly involved in organising suicide attacks on Shias in the Hyderi mosque and Imambargah Ali Raza of Karachi last month were produced before the Karachi Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on June 14. It remanded them to police custody for two weeks. The eight suspects said to have been involved in the attack on the convoy of the Corps Commander were described by the Police as belonging to a hitherto unknown organisation called Jundullah (Army of Allah). [The eight are named.] .... .âThe Jundullah group is a new terror group which has links with Al Qaeda, and their members have been trained in Wana, (the capital of South Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas ),â the Inspector-General of Police of Karachi Kamal Shah told reporters. He said that at least 20 members of the Jundullah had been identified and there could be more. They were all from Karachi. ... On the night of June 13, the Interior Minister also announced the arrest by the Karachi Police of one Massob Arooshi, described as the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), who used to be projected by the Americans as the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the USA. Masoob Arooshi was reportedly arrested from the house of one Abbas Khan, a former divisional engineer of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, who is stated to be the father of Javed Abbas, a serving Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) of Sindh. .... a Shia cleric from Gilgit working in Karachi tipped off the police about the presence of Arooshi in the house of Abbas Khan. .... ... the Al Qaeda leadership suspect that the Shia members of the Hazara community in Balochistan and of the Kashmiri community in Gilgit in the Northern Areas (NA) had been collaborating with the US intelligence in its hunt for the dregs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. .... Many in Karachi claim that Masoob Arooshi was actually arrested on a tip off by the US authorities, who, in turn, got their information from the Shia cleric. They say the Shias suspect that the Pakistani Police is mixed up with the LEJ and other elements of Osama bin Ladenâs International Islamic Front (IIF) and would not, therefore, take their information to the Pakistani Police. They would prefer giving their information to US officials since they feel that the US officials would ensure that the person pointed out by them is arrested by the Pakistani authorities. Interestingly, after the arrests in Karachi, the Pakistani authorities announced the end of the joint operations by the Army and the Air Force against the dregs of Al Qaeda and the IIF in the South Waziristan area with effect from June 14. ... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #1 I meant to put this on page 1. |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-06-16 9:01:58 AM |