MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) police have arrested three suspects in a seven-year-old suicide attack outside an imambargah in which eight people were killed.

The arrests were made in separate places in Muzaffarabad on Tuesday evening, Additional Superin­ten­dent of Police Asif Durrani said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The handcuffed suspects, two of them masked completely and one partially, were also shown to reporters. All were sporting beards.

On the night of Muharram 9 on Dec 27, 2009 a suicide bomber had blown himself up in a small procession passing a security barrier close to Imambargah Pir Alam Shah Bukhari. Eight people, three policemen among them, died and over 60 others were injured in the incident.

Mr Durrani identified the masterminds of the attack as Malick Ashfaq of Sarriyan village near Muzaffarabad, Omar Farooq Shah of Neelum valley and Khaqan Awan of Hattian Bala.

They had moved out of AJK and settled in South Waziristan, the official said.

The police were able to determine links between them and the attack two years later, after arresting one Rizwan of Charoota village, who had allegedly facilitated the trio and the bomber.

The bomber and the masterminds had stayed at the residence of Rizwan who was an active member of their group, according to police sources.

Rizwan became ill in police custody and died in the Combined Military Hospital.

“After receiving important information from him, we kept a sharp lookout for the three men and they were arrested after they returned to Muzaffarabad, assuming that people would have forgotten the 2009 attack,” Mr Durrani said.

The suspects belonged to the group of Nazirul Islam alias Shamil Khan of Dhirkot subdivision in Bagh district. He is wanted in connection with several acts of terrorism.

The police official said he could not disclose any more details because “it may alert the backers and sympathisers of the detained men”.

Earlier, the suspects were presented before a judicial magistrate who remanded them in police custody for two weeks for investigations.

Mr Durrani said a joint investigation team of police and intelligence agencies would interrogate them.

According to the police sources, after the Lal Masjid incident of 2007 in Islamabad, Shamil Khan and Asmatullah Muavia, leader of the Punjabi Taliban, had quit the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and decided to attack the law enforcers in revenge.

Shamil Khan organised activists in AJK who launched several attacks on army personnel, most of them in Poonch division.

On Feb 2, the police had arrested Kashif Hanif of the same group from the outskirts of Rawalakot. The suspect, whose name figured on Schedule Four of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), was allegedly involved in at least nine cases registered in five police stations of Poonch division since 2010.

According to AJK home department officials, 31 people were put on the Fourth Schedule in the region through notifications issued in April and September 2015 and March last year.

However, the police sources said most of them had either been arrested or eliminated.

Published in Dawn February 9th, 2017