Hazara Town massacre case: No precise information given on blast, says police

Attorney general submits ‘confidential’ federation response.

ISLAMABAD:

The Quetta police have denied being cautioned about the second attack on the city’s Shia Hazara community, telling the Supreme Court on Thursday that no ‘specific’ information was shared with them by intelligence agencies.

Information shared by the intelligence agencies with the police is always sketchy and in pieces, Capital City Police Officer Quetta Mir Zubair said, adding that in the case of the February 16 bomb blast, the only thing they were told was that more attacks like the one that occurred on January 10 could take place again.

The CCPO was responding to a question raised by a three-member bench of the apex court, which has been hearing a suo motu case on the February 16 attack that killed around 90 Shia Hazaras and came over a month after an attack on their community left over 100 people dead.

After hearing the arguments of the CCPO, the chief justice directed him and Balochistan Home Secretary Akbar Durrani to go through the spy agencies’ reports and submit their response accordingly.

The CCPO further said that law enforcers were unable to avert the attack since the terrorists had changed their modus operandi and exploited the situation of acute water shortage in the locality of Hazara Town. Saturday’s blast occurred when a bomb packed inside a water tanker exploded.

The water tanker was not checked even though there are two FC posts and a police post on the way to Hazara Town, the police officer said.

Meanwhile, an official, appearing on behalf of the FC Quetta commandant, submitted a report on the action the FC had taken on averting such terror incidents in the future.

The Attorney General of Pakistan Irfan Qadir submitted a report on behalf of federation of Pakistan and requested the court to consider it a response from President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf. Qadir requested to keep the report confidential.

The court adjourned the hearing till February 26.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd, 2013.