KARACHI, Dec 15: Police claimed to have made a breakthrough in the Sheraton hotel bomb blast case as they have arrested a man for his alleged involvement in the case.

Reliable sources, however, said Asif Zaheer was picked up in October in Raiwind, Punjab, at the conclusion of a religious congregation there. He remained in the custody of intelligence agencies for more than a month and was handed over to the Karachi police at the end of November for further investigations. The Karachi police had shown his arrest on Dec 14, in Tipu Sultan police limits.

Asif received training in planting and detonating bombs in a Harkat Jihad-i-Islami camp in Afghanistan, the Inspector-General of the Sindh Police, Syed Kamal Shah, told a news conference at the office of the DIG Operations Karachi on Sunday.

The investigation police following information raided a godown in Kathiawar Society on Ameer Khusro Road in Tipu Sultan police limits on Dec 14 and arrested three suspects, Asif Zaheer, Sohail Noor and Mohammed Yusuf, he added.

Police recovered a Volkswagen car (A-2951), 250 bags of ammonium nitrate, grinders, silver powder, other chemicals and detonators, used in bomb explosion.

The IG claimed that 10kgs of explosives had been placed in a car, when police raided the godown.

Mr Shah said Asif, allegedly an expert in bomb-making, was the prime suspect so far as his direct involvement in the Sheraton bomb blast had been established as “we have recovered from him the registration book of the car (J-6560) used in the bomb blast.”

He said Asif had prepared the car and placed the explosives in it at a bungalow near Hino Chowrangi in Defence View. Then the car was driven to Sheraton hotel where it was struck against a bus resulting in an explosion on May 8. In the explosion 11 French engineers and three Pakistani nationals were killed. Asif had been selected as a suicide bomber, but the decision was changed at the eleventh hour. The suicide bomber, who replaced Asif, remained unidentified, Mr Shah said.

He maintained that investigations carried out so far had not shown that the suspects had any links with the Al Qaeda. The suspects arrested for the US consulate bombing were affiliated with the Harkatul Mujahideen Al-Almi and they had no connection with Asif.

He told reporters that the godown in Kathiawar Colony was owned by Anees Memon, who rented it out to a man who was missing. Asif had given the names of his accomplices, involved in the Sheraton hotel bomb blast. Now the number of these suspects were five. The IG did not disclose their names.

He said Asif had chosen himself for the suicide bombing. They planned to explode the car-bomb somewhere on Sharea Faisal and their target were US diplomats. Although the persons behind the US consulate bomb blast were different, the arrested suspects believed that their aim had not been achieved, so another bomb blast was needed.

“The arrest of these suspects will lead us to solve the Sheraton bomb blast case,” the IG said.

Mr Shah disclosed that Asif was also wanted by the Punjab police as he had been involved in the killing of a former director of Pakistan Television, Aun Mohammed Rizvi, in Rawalpindi.