Procession blast: Jacobabad bombing facilitators arrested

SUKKUR:

Police on Thursday announced they had apprehended two of the three men who had facilitated the deadly bomb attack on a Shia procession in Jacobabad in October last year.

At a hurriedly called press conference at the SSP’s Office in Jacobabad on Thursday evening, DIG Larkana Abdullah Shaikh said that a team constituted to probe the attack had identified three residents of the city Maulana Abdul Basit Brohi, Maulana Ibrahim Brohi and Maulana Kamran Farooqui Kharani, as facilitators of the attack.

The probe team, formed on orders of Sindh IG, had raided several suspected hideouts in Jacobabad and Quetta during which they managed to apprehend Maulana Basit and Maulana Ibrahim. However, Maulana Kharani remains at large. On October 23, 2015, at least 22 people were killed and 30 others were injured when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives through a mourning procession near Jacobabad’s Hajan Shah Dargah.

DIG Shaikh said that the masterminds of the attack had met at the Madrassa Hussainia Ibn-e-Ameer Muavia in November 2014.

This meeting had been attended by members of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi including Maulana Zahoor, Maulana Zubair, Aslam Shah and Shah Jee in addition to the facilitators Maulana Basit, Maulana Ibrahim and Kharani.

The group reconvened at the same location in September 2015 in which the young suicide bomber, Abdullah alias Habibullah Brohi, was introduced.

DIG Shaikh said that the suicide bomber stayed at Maulana Ibrahim’s house for four days before the attack.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th,  2016