Three Sea View terrorists identified as Chechens

They came to Karachi via Quetta and planned to attack Abdullah Shah Ghazi.

KARACHI:

The three remaining terrorists, out of five, who died in the Sea View blast were identified as two Chechen men and a woman, according to additional IG of Karachi, Ghulam Shabbir Sheikh.

The suicide attack near Salt and Pepper Village restaurant on November 16 claimed seven lives. Four bodies had been identified — two terrorists, Atiq Bengali and Shoaibur Rehman, and two policemen, Maula Bukhsh and Mumraiz Iqbal. Three bodies had remained unidentified till now.

Sheikh was addressing a press conference at the central police office on Saturday evening.

According to him, the three remaining unidentified terrorists were two Chechen men and a woman, and the terrorists had entered Karachi via Quetta. The explosion had occurred when the suicide attackers blew themselves up to avoid arrest when Iqbal and Bukhsh were chasing their Suzuki high-roof.

Sheikh said that the actual target of the attack was the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi, where his urs was being celebrated. According to the literature found from the blast site, the terrorists were from the sect that disapproves of visits to shrines. Sheikh said that two terrorists wore slippers, and they suspected them to be the attackers. The rest wore trousers and joggers.

Security arrangements for Muharram

Talking about security arrangements for Muharramul Haram, the additional IG said that 15,000 policemen were deployed across the city and mourning processions will be monitored closely by closed-circuit camera and monitoring systems installed at central police office and the offices of SPs, DIGs. Vehicles with closed-circuit cameras will also monitor the processions from all sides.

Bank robberies

Talking about the rising number of bank heists in the city, AIG Sheikh said that the police had identified a dozen gangs which were involved.

According to him, defective standard operating procedures (SOPs) of local banks provided lucrative opportunities to these gangs. The record of bank robberies in the last five years revealed that the robbers only targeted the local banks because the foreign banks followed their SOPs strictly to prevent such incidents.

Sheikh said that the robbing gangs had all the technical know-how, such as where the digital video recording (DVR) systems were placed and how they should be destroyed.

All the local banks used to send the DVRs to their head offices every day but they haven't been doing so for a while, which is not only helpful for the bank robbers but also creates problems for the law enforcers to identify the culprits, said the AIG.

All the banks were asked to maintain DVRs on a daily basis and submit them to their respective head offices and police departments as well.

AIG Sheikh also announced shoulder promotions for the two policemen who foiled a bank robbery in Block 13 of Gulshan-e-Iqbal on Thursday. He said that the suspects, Sharif Khan and Omar Zaman, who were arrested red-handed, hailed from Kohat and confessed to being involved in more than two dozen robberies.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2011.