KARACHI: The Counter-Terrorism Department on Friday claimed to have apprehended nine militants linked with the banned Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) who were involved in targeted killings of eight workers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, including a party lawmaker, and other killings and bomb blasts, according to officials.

The Karachi AQIS chief was among the militants arrested.

The CTD received information that AQIS and LJ militants were planning a major terror attack during Muharram through suicide bombings and armed attacks on certain major Imambargahs, according to CTD SSP Omer Shahid Hamid.

Acting on a tip-off, a CTD team encircled a house early in the morning on Thursday in 5-B/1 sector of North Karachi. On seeing the police, the suspects attacked the raiding party with hand-grenades and a shootout ensued, lasting 35 minutes.

“Police retaliated with firing and lobbed teargas shells inside the house, forcing the militants to go to the roof where nine militants were arrested,” SSP Hamid said at a press conference in his office.

The militants were taken into custody and shifted to the CTD headquarters for interrogation.

They have been identified as Faiz Rehman alias Abdullah alias Daniyal, chief of the Karachi AQIS, its vice chief Mustafa alias Shahzad, Mohammed Afroze alias Lambo, targeted killer of AQIS, and Ibrahim alias Sajid, Mohammed Saeed alias Kalu alias Abbas alias Babla alias Farrukh Abbas, chief of LJ Orangi Town, Ahmed Sadiq alias Zeeshan and Furqan Alam alias Zeeshan of LJ and Zainul Abideen alias Zain and Abdul Bari Usman of the outlawed Sipah Sahaba Pakistan.

During interrogation, they revealed that they were involved in the targeted killing of MQM lawmaker Manzar Imam and seven other workers of the party who were mostly targeted in different parts of Orangi Town between 2012 and 2015. They were also involved in killing four workers of the Sunni Tehreek during the same period, also in Orangi Town.

They were involved in a bomb attack on a police station in Gulshan-i-Iqbal this year, as well as bomb attacks on two police stations in Orangi Town, an internet café in Baldia and a video centre outside a mosque in North Karachi.

SSP Hamid, accompanied by CTD official Raja Umer Khattab at the press conference, said that Karachi AQIS chief Faiz Rehman was arrested in 2010 along with three accomplices while preparing a bomb in Orangi Town.

He went into hiding after having been released on bail in 2013. One of his accomplices, Molvi Mushtiaq, was killed in Afghanistan last year.

The militants also revealed that two members of their network from LJ Orangi Town were among the 10 militants who were killed during the attack on the Karachi airport in 2014.The CTD intends to seek court permission to exhume the bodies of the 10 militants to obtain DNA samples for confirmation.

The SSP believed that at present the LJ and AQIS were carrying out acts in Orangi Town and adjoining areas, while AQIS’s whole command belonged to the Bramcha area of Afghanistan.

The AQIS set-up in Karachi was being run by Naseem Bhai alias Hanif Bhai and Kamran alias Atif who were previously associated with Harkatul-Mujahideen Al-Almi.

Seized arms included 18 pistols of 9mm and 30 bore, one suicide jacket, four bombs, four hand-grenades and one laptop. The pistols were being sent to the police’s forensic lab to determine whether they had been used in any other targeted killings, the SSP said.

CTD official Khattab told Dawn that the militants targeted the MQM workers for attacking members of the Tableeghi Jamaat and suspicions of being ‘informers’, while they targeted members of the Sunni Tehreek over sectarian differences.

Published in Dawn October 8th, 2016