KARACHI: A suspected militant, who was educated enough to get a job in a multinational company, has been taken into custody for his alleged involvement in the Safoora Goth bus carnage and rights activist Sabeen Mahmud murder cases, sources said on Thursday.

They said that an intelligence agency arrested Ali Rehman alias Toona, an engineer by profession and an accomplice of Saad Aziz, the prime suspect in the two cases, in a raid in Punjab, where he had been hiding after the May 2015 Safoora bus carnage.

Police declared him an absconder in the charge-sheet in both the Safoora carnage and Sabeen Mahmud murder cases and an antiterrorism court had also issued his non-bailable arrest warrants.

Rehman’s name first emerged after the Sindh police’s Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) detected the group responsible for the Safoora carnage and arrested several suspects in Karachi. CTD official Raja Umer Khattab had told a press conference that the group was ‘inspired’ by the ideology of the militant Islamic State group.

According to the sources, suspect Rehman came in contact with Saad Aziz, a business graduate from the prestigious Institute of Business Administration, when the latter started working in the same multinational firm, Unilever Pakistan, where he was working as an engineer. Soon they became close friends.

A Unilever Pakistan spokesperson could not be reached despite several attempts.

Rehman along with suspect Aziz did a recee to target rights activist Mahmud. They attended one of the programmes organised at Sabeen Mahmud’s The Second Floor (T2F) cafe and could be seen in a photograph taken on the occasion.

“Ali Rehman was directly involved in the killing of Sabeen Mahmud,” said a security official, who wished not to be named.

Ms Mahmud was shot dead near the Defence Library when she along with her mother was returning home in her car after organising a seminar about the Balochistan issue in April 2015.

Later, her driver, an eyewitness to the killing, was also gunned down in the metropolis.

Regarding his involvement in the Safoora carnage, the sources said that although he did not take part in the massacre he was among the group of militants that planned and carry out the attack.

He was among several suspects who reached the spot on their motorbikes. Rehman did not enter the bus to carry out the shooting, a source said, adding that after accomplishing their mission he along with the killers escaped on their motorbikes.

Around 45 Shia Ismaili community members, including 18 women, were killed and eight others sustained wounds in an armed attack on their bus near Safoora Goth on May 13, 2015.

Later, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah announced the arrest of four suspected militants — Saad Aziz, Hafiz Nasir, Mohammad Azhar and Tahir Minhas — and claimed that Saad Aziz masterminded the Safoora attack as well as the killing of Sabeen Mahmud.

Both cases have been transferred from antiterrorism courts to a military court and the suspects are also in the custody of army authorities.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2016