Police in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi have arrested four alleged terrorists, who the police claim belong to a banned sectarian group involved in the murder of a leading Shiite cleric Agha Ziauddin. The deputy inspector general (DIG) of police in Rawalpindi Syed, Moravat Ali Shah said that they also seized four hand grenades and four pistols from the men. Ziauddin was gunned down in January in the northern city of Gilgit and 15 people died in violence that followed his death. Hundreds of Shiites protested in the streets of Lahore and Islamabad at his murder.During questioning, the four men who were indentified as Shah Rais Khan, Izhar Wali, Aurangzeb and Nasir Abbasi said that they all were from Gilgit and belonged to Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.
The DIG said the four men confessed to having murdered Agha Ziauddin and that they were planning to attack two different religious procession with grenades but were prevented from carrying out their plan because of the strict security arrangements made by the police.
Pakistan has a long history of sectarian violence between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims.