Telenor, Mobilink attacks: TTP man behind extortion killed

Syed Yasin Shah was running the outfit in Balochistan.

KARACHI: In the end, the criminals got burned by their own crime. After shadowing Tehreek-i-Taliban extortion negotiations for weeks, the police were able to catch, and kill the man they believe masterminded recent attacks on mobile phone service franchises.

Twenty-nine-year-old Syed Yasin Shah, whose photo was dug up from his NIC, put up a fight, firing from his car that was intercepted going to Shahrae Faisal on Rashid Minhas Road. The Crime Investigation Department (CID) and intelligence men had gone out after them upon extracting information from an earlier arrest. Yasin was shot dead, an accomplice, Syed Qadir Shah, was arrested, while two intelligence men, Wajid and Arshad, were injured in the shoot-out.

Tension spread in Dalmia where shops, showrooms, banks and restaurants shut down. According to Hassan Murshid, who works at a restaurant on Rashid Minhas Road, “The people pulled the shutters down. Some ran away while others remained outside. We didn’t know what was happening till we later saw it on television.”

The case, the chase

While the TTP had been demanding extortion in the billions of rupees from certain big businesses, the breakthrough came after attacks on two telecommunication franchises, a few kilometres from each other, in Nazimabad in December and January.

On December 23, two men had walked into a Telenor outlet at Shahra-e-Noorjahan and opened fire.

Less than two weeks later, on January 2, two men lobbed an explosive device into a Mobilink franchise near Hyderi market. According to the CID, the man they believed planned the attacks was Yasin, alias Sain. They also pegged him to be running the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Balochistan.

According to the CID’s SSP Fayyaz Khan, Shah was also involved in over half a dozen cases of target killings on the orders of the TTP commander of Mohmand Agency, Qari Shakeel.

Sources told The Express Tribune that the law-enforcement agencies were able to track Yasin after the arrest of Shareef, alias Zareef, around three days ago. He tipped the police off about Yasin. SSP Khan said that Shah was a trained militant and was operating the network on the directives of Qari Shakeel.

SSP Khan said that the TTP had demanded billions of rupees in extortion from the owners of different national and multi-national companies.

“The purpose of these attacks was to force the company owners to pay up without putting up any resistance,” said Khan. This might not be the end of the story, however, as Khan said that more attacks were planned in the city and Telenor and Mobilink were not the only companies the TTP men approached for extortion.

Nonetheless, the franchise owners appreciated the performance of the law-enforcement agencies. “These two men are the ones who attacked our franchise,” said Faisal Soni, the owner of the Telenor outlet. “We are satisfied and happy that the culprits were caught in such a short time. At least our fallen employees got justice.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2012.