Killing trends: Assassins train their sights more on elders than youth

CID chief claims if one group kills a certain age group, rivals will strike at the same.

KARACHI:

Target killers have figured out a better way to sow terror: instead of killing several young men, they are out to get their more ‘valuable’ elders.

During the recent spate of sectarian killings, The Express Tribune has learnt that an increasing number of elderly men from both Shia and Sunni groups are targeted.

Last year, the Deobandi school of thought lost prominent scholars, such as Maulana Aslam Sheikhupuri and Maulana Mufti Mohammad Ismail, a former leader of the banned sectarian outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Maulana Rafiqul Khalil, and Tableeghi Jamaat leader Haji Ghulam Hussain.

Meanwhile, a trustee of Islamic Research Centre imambargah Mukhtar Ahmed Azmi, former trustee of Muhammadi Dera imambargah Ibn-e-Hassan, owner of Karwan-e-Ahle Abba and trustee of Imambargah Ahle Abbas Jaffer Mohsin Rizvi were also gunned down. Malir Court Bar Association’s former president Salahuddin and Sindh Government Hospital, New Karachi, additional superintendent Dr Hassan Alam were also targeted.



“As time passes, the trend of sectarian killings is also changing,” observed Crime Investigation Department (CID) SP Mazhar Mashwani. “In sectarian killings, we initially saw that individual members were targeted. Then, they attacked places of worship, followed by targeting groups of rival members. Now, they are targeting elders, which never happened before.”

The leaders of the sectarian groups have, however, condemned this trend by stressing the importance of the elders as community assets. “If a Shia lawyer is gunned down, it is not just a loss for the community but a loss for the society as a whole,” said Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen’s Ali Ahmar. “Those men in our community were targeted who supported the community financially and were making it stronger.”

Agreeing with this argument, Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat’s leader Maulana Saeed Akbar Farooqui warned that there would be massive bloodshed in Karachi if targeted attacks on the elderly continued. “Only the young men were being targeted before, but the situation is completely different now,” Farooqui told The Express Tribune. “If this continues, no street, no neighbourhood will be safe.”

Even the target killers caught by the police have admitted that this is a planned move to target the elderly men of rival communities, CID’s Anti-Extremist Cell chief SSP Chaudhry Aslam Khan told The Express Tribune. “It is tit-for-tat.” Khan explained that when one group targets a particular age group, the rival group responds the same way. “What you sow, so shall you reap - that’s the rule of target killings.”

The killers know that if they remove the elders of the community, the rest of the community will eventually die out, Khan said. Even though the police are taking strict action against those involved in sectarian killings, Khan voiced hope that the leaders of these communities will play their part in creating harmony and forging cordial relations between each other.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th, 2013.