KARACHI: Hundreds of aliens held as FBI spreads its net
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, June 23: American intelligence agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with the help of Pakistani authorities, is keeping under constant surveillance the conversations made through satellite mobile phone sets in the Pakistani territory, and has arrested hundreds of foreigners on suspicion of their links with the Al-Qaeda or other such organizations.
Sources in the federal government said the authorities had directed the law enforcement agencies to extend all possible assistance to the FBI in tightening the noose around Al-Qaeda terrorists and the activists of the banned organizations providing shelter to Al-Qaeda men.
The step was taken in view of the intermittent terrorist attacks on foreigners and the American interests, the sources said. A terrorist attack on a church in the diplomatic enclave in the federal capital in March left five people dead. In May a suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying French technical experts in Karachi, killing 14 people including 11 French nationals. A car bomb explosion near the US Consulate in the mid of June killed at least 12 people including six women and two policemen, besides breaching a portion of the walls around the Consulate.
The sources said the FBI and the intelligence agencies of the countries allied with the United States in the war on terror had arrived in the country and carried out independent investigations. They had unanimously reached the conclusion that the Al-Qaeda was behind the terror attacks. The FBI believed that the members of the Al-Qaeda and those providing shelter to Al- Qaeda men one way or the other were involved in the attacks.
The sources said the FBI, using advanced satellite technology, had started scanning the conversations on satellite phone sets.
“FBI agents, particularly those based in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, are giving much importance to the conversations made in the languages spoken in Arab or African countries. The people speaking English, Urdu and other languages on satellite phones are also under surveillance,” said the sources.
“FBI men track down a suspected mobile phone and while the conversation is in progress they detect the exact location of # the caller through advanced satellite technology.
The agents immediately inform the personnel of the law enforcement agencies and raid the spotted place to nab the caller.
In most cases the callers have been picked up along with their satellite mobile phones,” the sources said.
A senior official in a law enforcement agency told Dawn, on condition of anonymity, that a number of foreigners, most of them belonging to Arab and African countries, had been picked up from several parts of the country, particularly in Sindh and the Punjab.
He said: “Several persons have been picked up after being tracked down during satellite phone conversations and on their lead their acquaintances have also been picked up.”
“We do not know the fate of those picked up as we have nothing to do with them. We just provide assistance to the FBI in picking up the suspects. We do not know how many of the detained persons have been let off”, he added. He disclosed that the conversations made on the local mobile phones were also under surveillance.
The sources said that more than 700 foreigners, mostly Arabs, had been taken into custody for having alleged links with the Al-Qaeda or the extremist organizations banned by the federal government, and several activists of the banned organizations had been taken into custody for their alleged involvement in high- profile cases and bomb explosions. The sources added that Akram Lahori and Ataur Rehman alias Naeem Bukhari were among those taken into custody, but their arrest had been kept secret for some reasons. They claimed that the FBI was considering establishing permanent base camps in all the major cities of the country.
