Police are looking for at least four suspected key terrorists, including a deputy of killed Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, in a probe into the suicide attack on a Pakistan Air Force bus in Sargodha on November 1 last year, sources told Daily Times. Identified as “Ustad Rabbani” from Talagang, the suspect is believed to be the second-in-command of Dadullah, who died in fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan on May 12, 2007. Other wanted suspects include Tayyab (who investigators said was trained in making bombs and an expert attack planner, and according to one investigator, he was also involved in the suicide attack outside Lahore High Court on January 10), Azmari (also known as Luqmani, a wheatish African-looking long-haired man who speaks Pushto and Arabic, and is believed to finance terrorists) and one Mohsin.
Police had initially held five suspects in connection with the Sargodha attack, identified as Umar Farooq, Abrar, Sikandar, Khalid Usman and Qari Asghar. Umar Farooq admitted he could make bombs, jackets used in suicide attacks, remote-controlled detonators, toxic injections and poison that could be mixed in water. He was known as “the machine of bombers”, investigators said. A two-inches-by-six-inches bomb was seized from a location he disclosed.
Sikandar said he was assigned by Mohsin to attack the office of the Faisalabad superintendent of Traffic Police. He said Mohsin assigned another person to attack a deputy inspector general of police. Qari Asghar, who lived in a madrassa in a village 16 kilometres from Sargodha, had provided the empty milk cans which were filled with explosives to carry out the attack, investigators said.
Information revealed by the men led the police to other suspects including Fahad Basra, the nephew of killed sectarian terrorist Riaz Basra, on January 26. Investigators said Fahad had received from Umar two jackets for suicide bombers for a plan to kill a leader of “another sect”.
Two suspected would-be suicide bombers were then held from Kabirwala and Jhang. Police seized jackets to be used in suicide attacks, ball bearings and nails, detonators and explosives from them. Investigators said one of them had said four other men had entered Punjab with the intention to carry out suicide attacks on politicians – two of them in Lahore, and two in southern Punjab. Investigators said the network was highly organised and were possibly linked to Baitullah Mehsud and Al Qaeda. They said the group was also getting financial and other support from outside Pakistan.