LAHORE, Jan 23: The city police chief claimed on Thursday that the arrest of four men on Wednesday night had thwarted a series of sabotage activities.

“They had confessed to having planned attacks on foreigners and places of worship,” said Khwaja Khalid Farooq at a press conference at the city police headquarters.

He declined to give details whether they belonged to any organization or acting individually.

Saying that they were well trained, Mr Farooq also refused to give details from where they had got training.

However, Punjab home secretary Brig Ejaz Shah (retired) had told a foreign news agency in the morning that one of the alleged terrorists belonged to the outlawed Lashkar-i-Taiba and the other three to Harkatul Mujahideen.

Identifying them as Yousuf alias Abbas of Rahim Yar Khan, Irfan and Waleed of Lahore, and Tahir alias Humayun of Sadiqabad, he said they were arrested in a raid conducted on a tip-off that they had plotted to kidnap the son of an industrialist for Rs6 million ransom.

They wanted to use the money to execute their plans as they had already purchased weapons from Peshawar.

Niaz Ahmad, the owner of the house where they were staying, had also been taken into custody for questioning, he added.

The arrested men were aged between 20 and 25, said the police chief and added they had a large number of weapons which were recovered from their house by the raiding team. They included five grenades, six detonators, five pistols, two rifle silencers, one pen pistol, 233 bullets of different weapons, nine magazines and two cell phones.

He said two more raids were conducted on the identification of the accused from where two wigs, two pairs of gloves, two telephone sets and five cell phone chargers were seized.

Mr Farooq said a case on charges of criminal conspiracy against state, possessing explosives and sophisticated weapons had been registered against them. “We are going to produce them in a court on Friday (today),” he added.