ISLAMABAD / TAXILA, Oct 13: The government has arrested eight Al Qaeda suspects for their alleged involvement in planting Russia-made rockets in different parts of the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad last week.
“The arrests have been made by intelligence agencies by tracing the cellphone calls which they made to activate detonators of the rockets,” Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said at a press conference here on Friday.
One of the significant arrests in this case was made in Taxila where 42-year-old lathe mechanic Sadiq was picked up from his workshop on Friday.
His arrest created panic among shopkeepers of the area. When his family members and relatives along with notables of the area approached Taxila Police Station for inquiry, the police expressed ignorance and said they did not take part in the operation, nor were they informed of it.
The family members and relatives of Sadiq have expressed their concern over his mysterious disappearance and appealed to senior officials of the police department to trace out the missing mechanic.
The interior minister said there were clues that the arrested accused had links with Al Qaeda. He said the accused were arrested from different cities within nine days of the recovery of rockets.
The minister said the agencies recovered 11 rockets of 107mm diameter, two Russian fragmentation grenades, 49 rounds of grenade launcher, 920 rounds of Dragonov sniper rifle, eight detonators, four pins of grenades, four rolls of primer cord, a packet of plastic explosive weighing half kilogramme and 260 rounds of 12.7mm rifle.
Mr Sherpao said a group of terrorists wanted to create chaos and sense of insecurity among people in the twin cities by planting anti-tank rockets at three different places in the Ayub Park near Army House, in front of the Federal Secretariat and at Shakkarparian.
He said the rockets had been deployed in one go at all places to hit their targets simultaneously through mobile telephone signals.
“Fortunately, these devices did not go off except one that landed at golf course adjacent to Ayub Park at 9:30 pm on October 4,” he said.
Intelligence agencies, he said, went into action and made a breakthrough by tracing calls made form cellphone sets to the sets attached to rockets.
The minister said the contact numbers of the culprits were obtained from the mobiles phones which led their arrests.
Responding to a question about possibility of further arrests in the case, the minister said preliminary interrogation had revealed that some of the accomplices of the arrested accused were still at large and efforts were being made to net them.
Later, Secretary Interior Syed Kamal Shah told Dawn that the arrested accused were Pakistani and had been trained in Afghanistan.
“They had recently joined Al Qaeda because the intelligence agencies went through the history of each individual and found none of them involved in any terrorist act in the past,” the secretary said.
He ruled out involvement of banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in the case and said: “At some stage we had opinion that BLA was behind the plot but later it was confirmed that it had nothing to do with the case.”
