Sectarian hit-men move from killing individuals to targeting families: Police

They suspect it has been going viral after the ISO blast.

KARACHI: It is difficult to decipher a trend if the victims are picked off one by one each day. Isolated reports fail to give the full picture. But now the police are fairly certain that the sectarian revenge killings have taken a new turn: groups and families are being targeted rather than the individual.

In the last 30 days, six similar homicides suggest that the Deobandi and Shia militant wings are interlocked in a frightening new spiral.

It started on August 18, when suspects from the banned Sipah-e-Mohammad Pakistan killed nine friends affiliated with the Deobandi school of thought in Gulberg and North Karachi within two hours. District West DIG Akram Bharoka believes that the Deobandis were targeted in North Karachi primarily because it was their home territory.

The police suspect that the killings were an instant reaction to the bomb blast at the Imamia Student Organisation’s Youm-e-Quds rally which took place earlier that day.

A few weeks later, on September 5, suspects from the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan gunned down an advertising icon and the chairperson of the Islamic Research Centre Trust, Mukhtar Aazmi, and his son Mohammad Baqir. The suspects opened fire on Aazmi’s car as the father and son were heading home from work. Aazmi’s grandson, who was also in the car with them, was injured.

Around 19 days later, four brothers affiliated with the Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat were shot dead by motorcyclists near Disco Morr, North Karachi. On September 26, 60-year-old Mohammad Raza and his two sons, Kumail and Abbas, were killed in Pan Mandi, Napier Road. As the killings continued, on Wednesday night, three more Shia men were shot dead in two separate murders. In Gulbahar, four men on two motorcycles opened fire at 42-year-old Zafar Ahmed Alvi, said the Rizvia police. According to DSP Rustam Khattak, the suspects started shooting at other people as they tried to escape and killed Zahid Ali Jaffery, 45, and injured three men identified as Altaf, Iqbal Ahmed and Jackson Pervez. The DSP believes that Zafar, who was associated with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement was the prime target. Thirty-five-year-old Zaheer Abbasi was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in Gulberg after he dropped his son off at school, said the Samanabad police. They believe that he was killed in a sectarian attack. Another Shia man identified as Nisar was shot dead while his brother and cousin were injured in a targeted attack in New Karachi by four men. However, the police suspect that Nisar was killed for personal reasons.

Changing trends

From an eye for an eye in the 1990s, sectarian attacks have grown to also target mosques, imambargahs and important party workers, religious leaders and scholars.

Law enforcers claim that the militants who went to prison for sectarian killings in the 1990s are free now and might have helped train a new set of killers.

According to Crime Investigation Department’s SSP Fayyaz Khan, one of the groups had the support of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. “There are several reasons behind the sectarian violence but the recent cases are coming up because of Eidul Azha,” he said. “In the weeks leading to Eid, these people like to flex their muscles to show their strength and collect donations. If you link the previous events together it sort of makes sense - Deobandi scholars were killed and then Shias were killed.”

So far the only suspect the police have been able to arrest was an alleged hitman from the banned Sipah-e-Mohammad Pakistan. They claim he killed seven Deobandis near Disco Morr. DIG Bharoka said that the suspect had confessed to being from a militant group which was trying to increase sectarian violence. “We cannot fight this overnight,” he said. “We need to divide into teams and work on solving these cases. That is the only way to combat sectarian violence.”

One of the big sectarian killing cases in 1994 was the attack on Major Alay Ali Jaffri’s house in PECHS Block 6. His house, which was also used as a small imambargah and ibadatgah, was attacked one morning by men allegedly from the SSP. CID’s SP Mazhar Mashwani, who at the time was an ASI and in charge of the case, says that the suspects had tied the men up with their cummerbunds and opened fire on them. Five people were injured and two, including Jaffri, were killed.  “When we [the police] got there, we had an encounter with the suspects,” he said. “Two of them were killed and we arrested three others, including Shahid, Farhan and Imran.” Mashwani was promoted, became a sub-inspector and received a medal from the president. However, the suspects were later released on bail by the court.

Another well known case in the 1990s was the murder of Deobandi scholar Maulana Habibullah Mukhtar near Guru Mandir in 1997. The police managed to arrest two suspects, Tanveer Abbas and Saleem Jaffer, who were later acquitted by the court. They believe that the main suspect, a man identified as Rana, was hiding in Iran. Around a year or so ago, Abbas was murdered in Rizvia. The police suspect that he might have been killed in a mugging.

While talking to The Express Tribune, Mashwani said that these target killings are incomparable. “We suspect that these people are not acting alone. They have a strong back-up system,” he said. “In the 1990s, a target killer was hired with a clear-cut reason to kill someone. Like if someone wanted to kill me they would hold against me the fact that I am a policeman and have arrested a lot people. They would monitor my movements and strike within a few day. Now, they are just killing families - there is no clear direction just the motivation to kill.”

DEOBANDI (Hardline Sunni)

 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi

 Established: 1996

Leadership: Mohammad Ajmal aka Akram Lahori, Malik Mohammad Ishaq, (late) Riaz Basra

Headquarters: Jhang, Rahim Yar Khan, Lahore, Karachi

Legal status: Banned

Strongholds: Presence in southern Punjab and Karachi, as well as Balochistan, because of its close links with the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (see right)

The LeJ is a breakaway group of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (dark orange) that has been implicated in and has taken responsibility for attacks on Shias as well as the
attack on the CID headquarters in Karachi and the Sri Lankan
cricket team in Lahore

Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan

Established: 1985

Leadership: (Free) Ahmed Ludhianvi, Orangzaib Farooqui

Headquarters: Jhang

Legal status: Banned

Strongholds: Support in key urban areas of Pakistan as well as rural Sindh and southern and central Punjab

The SSP was founded by Haq Nawaz Jhangvi and was reportedly propped up by the establishment as a counter to what it saw was increasing Iranian and Shia influence in the country. It has contested elections in the past and plans to do so in the future. It is a member of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, a coalition of religio-political parties.

SHIA

Sipah-e-Mohammad

Established: 1993

Leadership: Ghulam Raza Naqvi, Munawar Abbas Alvi (behind bars)

Headquarters: Lahore, Karachi

Legal status: Banned

Described as a Shia group responsible for executing revenge attacks for the murder of Shias, and opposes the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (see left). Earlier, members had broken away from the Tehrik-e-Jaffaria Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2012.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, Ghulam Raza Naqvi and Munawar Abbas Alvi were mentioned as leaders of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan. The error has been fixed.