Category: Terrorism

Mirza said he was an MQM worker and received direct orders from MQM leader Babar Ghauri to assassinate KESC chief Shahid Hamid. “I was summoned at Babar Ghauri’s house where I took Altaf Hussain’s orders via telephone. Altaf Hussain would usually pass on instructions through Babar Ghauri,” alleged Saulat Mirza.

Speaking to ARY News, MQM Chief Altaf Hussain said, “Without any proof or evidence, Saulat Mirza’s statement will not have any effect on the party.” Hussain termed the allegations a conspiracy against MQM.

Babar Ghauri speaking to Geo News dismissed Mirza’s statement as a “fable” and denied having given any order for a murder.

“This is a made up story, we are not allowed to call workers to our house and deal with them there,” he said. When asked if Saulat Mirza has never come to his house, Ghauri said “no”.

“When he [Mirza] was in North Nazimabad, I met him then as an MPA,”.
“Then he was removed from the party and I maintained no communication or relationship with him.”

Mirza, however, said workers like him were used as “tissue papers” by MQM, and were disposed off when there was no use left for the party. “Other workers should take a lesson from my ending,” said Mirza. “Criminals in the party would get protection under Governor Sindh,” he claimed.

Meanwhile Sindh Governor’s spokesperson has stated that Dr. Ishratul Ibad has never supported any accused or criminal.

Saulat went on to say that workers in the MQM who gained popularity among the public are eventually sidelined.

“Mustafa Kamal was humiliated and then sidelined from the party because he had grown popular and Azeem Tariq was murdered for the same reason,” Mirza said.
“I have no vested interest in making these allegations at this hour. I just want to leave a message for those who wish to join, or are part of political organisations, to learn from my mistakes,” said the death-row inmate.
Meanwhile, Machh Jail Deputy Superintendent Sikandar Kakar while talking to DawnNews confirmed that they have received orders to postpone the hanging of Saulat Mirza for three days.

Mirza was found guilty of murdering the then managing director (MD) of Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC), now K-electric, Malik Shahid Hamid, his driver Ashraf Brohi, and his guard Khan Akbar outside Hamid’s residence in DHA on July 5, 1997.

Previously a resident of Block J in North Nazimabad, Karachi, Saulat was his parents’ fourth child.

Having received his intermediate education from Pakistan Shipowners’ College in Karachi, he became active in student politics and joined the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO), the students’ wing of MQM, then an acronym for Mohajir Qaumi Movement.

His name first appeared on intelligence and security agencies’ radar in 1994, after the killing of two US diplomats at Karachi’s Shahrah-i-Faisal and murder of four workers of an American oil company, Union Texas, near PIDC bridge.

He was believed to have been arrested from Karachi airport after his arrival from Bangkok; police confirmed his arrest at a press conference on December 11, 1998.
During that press conference, in the presence of the then Karachi DIG, Ameen Qureshi, Saulat Mirza made revelations about his involvement in the murder of scores of innocent people, including several high-profile personalities.

Mirza was initially detained by FIA immigration officials for traveling on a fake identity but was handed over to the then Station House Officer (SHO) of Gulbahar police station, Mohammad Aslam Khan (Chaudhry Aslam), who was also present at the airport on intelligence reports.

Shrugging off allegations of being politically motivated, the law enforcers showed Wednesday morning that even the big guns could be silenced. A heavy contingent of Rangers raided Nine Zero, the headquarters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Karachi’s Azizabad area, detained around 20 criminals and seized a large cache of illegal weapons and ammo.

In the operation, which was managed and executed by members of the paramilitary force alone, a number of party workers, including MQM’s Rabita Committee member Amir Khan, and notorious convicts were detained during the raid which also incidentally claimed the life of a young MQM supporter.

After breaking barricades leading to MQM headquarters, Rangers personnel cordoned off the area and searched through departments of the party’s offices. During the raid, the Rangers cut off the telephone lines at Nine Zero, disabling communication with MQM’s international secretariat.

Scores of activists and party members protested the raid by Rangers by chanting slogans. Aerial firing also ensued outside Nine Zero as activists attempted to break the Rangers’ cordon. As the situation turned chaotic, Waqas Ali Shah of MQM’s Central Information Committee was killed during the raid while Express News cameraman Waseem Mughal was injured in the firing.

Shah’s death invoked the need of an enquiry into the incident as it remained unclear if he died due to Rangers’ aerial firing or someone at the spot killed him.

MQM spokesperson Wasay Jalil claimed that Shah was killed in straight fire by Rangers personnel around 7:45am Wednesday.

“Dozens of mobiles of Rangers appeared at Nine Zero around 6am. Personnel proceeded to raid 50 offices in our headquarters. They went to each office, went through all the files and broke telephones.”

Sindh Police Additional IG Ghulam Qadir Thebo said that Shah was not shot by Rangers personnel, but that the bullet fired was from a handgun.

Rangers Director General (DG) Major General Bilal Akbar said that MQM activist Shah was shot with a TT pistol and the fact would become clear once the medical board’s report is received.

SINDH CITIES COME TO A STANDSTILL:

MQM announced a day of peaceful protest against the search operation by Rangers and urged for transport services to be suspended throughout the day.

MQM leader Farooq Sattar termed the raid “deeply upsetting and worth investigating”. He said that MQM is compliant of all laws and instead of appreciating the party’s efforts of promoting peace, it is being treated with contempt.

He demanded of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar and Sindh Governor Ishratul Ebad to play their due roles. Sattar also warned that the situation could be a setback to the enhancement of democratic process.

Commercial activity was suspended with shops, markets and educational institutions remained closed not just in Karachi but in other cities of the province, such as Hyderabad, Sukkur, Nawabshah, Jamshoro and Mirpur Khas.

Petrol pumps and private schools in several areas of Karachi were also reportedly shut down as activists in large numbers protested against the Rangers. Children who managed to get to schools were sent back to their homes and examinations were cancelled in colleges and universities.

While the MQM has maintained that the protest against the Rangers raid will be peaceful, a bus was set alight at Gulistan-i-Jauhar while a rickshaw was torched in Karimabad.

MQM leaders and activists gathered outside the headquarters but were not allowed to enter its premises.

RANGERS MAKE IT CLEAR:

A press release issued by Rangers soon after the raid on MQM’s headquarters said: “Pakistan Rangers Sindh has conducted a series of targeted raids at surrounding areas of 90 including Khursheed Memorial Hall today. During the above mentioned action, following hardcore criminals have been arrested: Faisal Mota, Farhan Shabbir aka Mullah Amir, Nadir and Ubaid K 2.”

Faisal Mota was awarded the death sentence in absentia on March 1, 2014 by an anti-terrorism court in the murder case of Wali Khan Babar, a Geo TV reporter while Nadir had also been convicted and sentenced 13 years imprisonment.

Rangers spokesperson Colonel Tahir called the two-hour raid a “purely information-based operation” and divulged that the Khursheed Memorial Hall at Nine Zero has been sealed and will be handed over to police for further investigation.

Col Tahir added that ammunition stolen from NATO containers was also seized during the search operation.

Speaking to media, MQM leader Faisal Subzwari and Haider Abbas Rizvi admitted that weapons were seized during the raid, but said that they were all licensed and were being kept for security in view of the threats being received from “the Taliban and other extremist elements”.

“After the Army Public School attack, even schools and colleges are now being asked to keep weapons for security. We were also told to keep weapons for our security,” Subzwari said.

MQM CHIEF DILLYDALLIES:

Contrary to his party leaders’ statement, MQM chief Altaf Hussain claimed that the weapons presented were “brought by the Rangers themselves in blankets”.

Claiming that the Establishment does not tolerate MQM’s presence, he maintained that the ammunition seized from Nine Zero by Rangers does not belong to MQM. He further said that if the weapons belonged to MQM, they would not have been stored in Nine Zero.

In a telephonic address, Hussain denounced the raid by Rangers on Nine Zero and said that this was the first time that the house and office of a political party chief was raided.

Addressing Rangers personnel, he remarked that Rangers have authority but “they are unable to deliver justice”. Claiming that more than 60 people were arrested during the raid by Rangers, he demanded that “terrorism in the name of search operations” be stopped.

However, later retracting from his stand point, MQM chief told a news channel that he was supportive of cracking down on criminals irrespective of where they were. In the same breath, he maintained that his party headquarters was not harbouring terrorists but “they were just living in the vicinity”.

Earlier, the MQM chief had stated in a telephonic address that “people who had committed mistakes should not have stayed at the MQM headquarters as they had jeopardised the security of others”. “Such people should have sought refuge elsewhere as I have been staying in Britain for the last 20 years,” said the MQM chief.

After condemning the raid, Altaf Hussain apparently appreciated the “valour” of Rangers personnel for “having dared to raid his house”. In an apparent naked threat, Hussain said that the Rangers’ officers who participated in the raid at his elder sister’s house “would soon become a part of the past”.

The MQM has in the recent past accused the Rangers of involvement in illegal detention and extrajudicial killings of its members and the raid and arrests appear to be the climax of the complex dynamics between the two sides.

The Rangers last month in a report implicated the MQM in the Baldia Town factory inferno fire that claimed the lives of at least 258 factory workers, a charge the party vehemently denies. The JIT report also contains several other disclosures about the involvement of MQM workers in several criminal cases as well rigging in the 2013 general elections.

LAHORE, March 15 — Suicide bombers attacked two Christian churches during Sunday services in the Pakistani city of Lahore, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens in the latest attack on religious minorities in the country.

The attacks occurred in quick succession outside Catholic and Protestant churches in Youhanabad, one of Pakistan’s biggest Christian neighborhoods.

A man rigged with explosives blew himself up outside the main gate of St. John’s Catholic Church after being prevented from entering by a security guard, said Haider Ashraf, a senior police officer.

A second blast went off minutes later in the compound of Christ Church, about half a mile away.

In the aftermath of the attacks, an enraged crowd lynched two people suspected of being accomplices in the bombings, one of whom was wrenched from police custody. Local news outlets reported that the mob set their dead bodies on fire.

The crowd also prevented the police from entering the scene of the attacks, and angry protests spread across the city. Demonstrations were also reported in Karachi and other cities.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Local television stations broadcast images of wailing and distraught relatives in hospital corridors. One woman wept hysterically as relatives tried to calm her.

Pervez Masih, 45, who was in one of the churches, said the explosion went off just as the prayer service was concluding. “Afterward people were running here and there, trying to save their lives,” he said.

Religious minorities including Shiites, Christians and Ahmadi Muslims have been under violent attack for years in Pakistan. At least 85 people were killed in an attack on All Saints Church in Peshawar in September 2013.

There have also been sporadic attacks on Christians in Punjab, the country’s most populous province, often triggered by accusations of blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad.

But Pakistan has been particularly on edge in recent months since a Taliban assault on a Peshawar school that killed at least 150 people, most of them children.

Nabila Ghazanfar, a spokeswoman for the Punjab police, said the deaths from the attack on Sunday included 13 worshipers, two police officers deployed for security outside the churches and the two suspects beaten to death by the mob, in addition to the two bombers.

Television images showed police officials struggling to keep the angry crowd away from one of the men who was later lynched.

Dr. Muhammad Saeed, the chief doctor at Lahore General Hospital, where scores of the wounded were brought, said that many were in critical condition.

Sohail Johnson, a witness who lives close to the churches, said the Sunday services were usually attended by more than 1,000 worshipers.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Heavily armed militants killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 40 after they stormed into a Shiite mosque during Friday Prayer in a suburb of Peshawar, the main city in northwestern Pakistan, doctors and officials said.

The assault was the most fearsome show of violence in the Peshawar area since a Taliban attack on a school in December that killed about 150 people, and it offered a chilling reminder of the continuing threat from militants in Pakistan despite a concerted crackdown by the security forces.

The police said that at least four gunmen wearing vests rigged with explosives and lobbing grenades entered the crowded Imamia Mosque in Hayatabad, an upscale suburb that is adjacent to the Khyber tribal district, a notorious militant sanctuary.

Security guards at the mosque shot and killed one attacker, but three others made it into the main hall. They fired guns and flung grenades into a crowd of worshipers before detonating their vests, the provincial police chief, Nasir Khan Durrani, told reporters at the scene.

Policemen surveyed the scene after Taliban suicide bombers attacked a Shiite mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, while victims were rushed to the hospital.

The number of casualties would have been higher if several grenades had not failed to explode, Mr. Durrani said.

A United Nations employee was among the dead. In a statement, the United Nations coordinator in Pakistan, Timo Pakkala, condemned the attack, saying, “Any violent act targeting minorities is totally unacceptable.” He also called on the government to foster tolerance in the country as it fights Islamist militancy.

Some witnesses said the attackers were wearing black police uniforms. Outside the mosque stood the charred remains of a vehicle they had used to reach the area and had set on fire moments before the assault.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack through a spokesman who said it was in revenge for the execution of a convicted militant known as Dr. Usman, who was hanged on Dec. 19. “This is a continuation of blood for blood,” he said in a statement emailed to journalists. “The government should expect further, and stronger, reaction.”

In a video sent from the same email address, a Taliban commander identified as Omar Mansoor, who also claimed responsibility for the Peshawar school attack in December, issued further warnings to the government. “Either Pakistan will become your graveyard, or God’s law, Shariah, will be implemented,” he said.

Government officials have blamed a Taliban-affiliated group for a suicide bomb attack on Jan. 30 at a Shiite mosque in Shikarpur, in the southern province of Sindh, that killed 61 people.

That attack was Pakistan’s deadliest sectarian assault since February 2013, when a bombing at a market in Quetta, the capital of the western province of Baluchistan, killed 89 people.

But government officials at the scene of Friday’s attack described it as a likely response to continuing Pakistani military operations in the nearby tribal belt, which have been stepped up since the assault at the Peshawar school in December.

Pakistan’s Parliament has also empowered the army to start trying Taliban suspects in military courts.

The government lifted a moratorium on executions in the wake of the Peshawar attack and on Friday hanged two convicted prisoners, bringing the number of executions since mid-December to 24.

Unlike those executed earlier, the two men hanged on Friday had not been convicted under Pakistan’s terrorism laws, a fact that Amnesty International criticized as a dangerous escalation by the country’s authorities.

“The death penalty is always a human rights violation, but the serious fair trial concerns in Pakistan make its use even more troubling,” the group said in a statement.

On Thursday, Pakistan’s military spokesman told reporters that the security forces had arrested 12 militants linked to the school attack but that six others, including the Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, remained at large.

Pakistani officials have said they believe Mr. Fazlullah is hiding in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but they have credited Afghan officials with helping pursue him, in a sign of thawing relations between the two countries.

Declan Walsh contributed reporting from London.