‘Mastermind’ of suicide attack at ISI Faisalabad office arrested

Suspect nabbed in the city after police received a tip-off.

FAISALABAD:


Faisalabad police claimed to have arrested the alleged mastermind of the suicide attack at Inter Services Intelligence’s (ISI) Faisalabad office on March 8, 2011, in which at least 34 people were killed while another 90, including an ISI official, were injured.


Abdur Rehman alias Kaka was arrested on a tip-off from Jameel Town, in the vicinity of Ghulam Muhammad Abad police station, by a special police team headed by DSP Gulberg Ashiq Jatt.

The accused was presented before the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) No. 1, where Judge Ishtiaq Ahmad granted the police six days’ physical remand for interrogation.

Rehman was arrested in light of the information provided by another accused, Qari Usman during interrogation, who had been arrested in an injured condition from the site of the blast.


The suspect planted a bomb in a car which exploded at a CNG station situated adjacent to an ISI and Military Intelligence (MI) office in Faisalabad, killing 25 people on the spot, while another nine later succumbed to their injuries.

Many of those injured were trapped under debris for hours or hit by shrapnel, after the blast reduced the building to rubble. Most casualties were recovered from the site of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) building and gas station which also suffered heavy damage.

Additionally, 35 vehicles were destroyed in the blast that created a 10-foot deep crater at the site.

The then City Police Officer (CPO) Faisalabad Dr Usman Anwar stated that about 150 kilograms of explosive material was used in a silver-coloured Mehran by the attackers, the target being the ISI building.

A six-member team of the Counter Terrorism Wing (CTW) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had collected samples of the explosive material from the crime scene and sent them to Islamabad for analysis. The cause of the blast was a remote device and it created a crater around four feet deep and 10 to 12 feet wide.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18th, 2012.

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