KARACHI: A ‘high-profile’ militant linked with the banned Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) has been apprehended in Karachi, it emerged on Monday.

A security official who wished not to be named told Dawn that Umar Jalal Chandio alias Kathio was detai­ned from Gulshan-i-Iqbal recently.

Jalal hailed from Mirpurkhas. He shifted to Kotri where he remained neighbour of Tahir Minhas alias Sain. Minhas was one of the main accused in the Safoora bus carnage in which over 47 members of the Shia Ismaili community were shot dead in 2015.

Minhas along with other militants was arrested in 2015 by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD).

A joint investigation team (JIT) in its report on the Safoora carnage revealed that Jalal was appointed AQIS’s local emir after the arrest of previous AQIS’s chief Abdul Rehman in 2001 in Karachi.

According to JIT, when Minhas was associated with AQIS, Jalal Chandio asked him to move to Karachi.

During a press conference in 2015, Raja Umar Khattab of the CTD had stated: “Jalal was associated with Al Qaeda’s Arab network while Haji Sahib (code name) was active in Karachi and the Wadh area of Balochistan where the group’s mainly Baloch youths were involved in kidnapping for ransom, terrorism and attacks on Nato forces’ containers.”

Sources told Dawn that Jalal’s wife was also a high-profile activist of AQIS.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2018