Smoke and fizzle: Capital police foils potential terrorist attack

Two suspects, five kg of explosives seized.

ISLAMABAD:

Following up on a tip-off, the Islamabad Police arrested suspected terrorists and seized explosives from their possession from the Rawat area of the federal capital late on Friday night.

The two suspects were arrested near T Chowk on main Grand Trunk Road in Rawat. The police also said that they confiscated around 5 kilograms of explosive material in the form of 36 sticks of dynamite, 15 hand grenades and four safety fuse pins from the suspects. Moreover, two sets of detonating cord measuring 34 feet and a 12-volt battery were also seized from the two men.

The police stated that the explosives and accompanying material could have been used to launch a major terrorist attack in Islamabad. The battery and detonating cable suggest that suspects wanted to manufacture a bigger bomb or a group of bombs, one police official suggested.

Police sources revealed that officers at the Sihala Police Station had received a tip-off about a bid to smuggle explosives into Islamabad. Following this, the police station started “special checking” at T Chowk, which constitutes the intersection of the Grand Trunk Road and the Islamabad Highway.

“Cars are checked during such exercises, but some people try to move on foot to escape the police checkpoints,” a police officer told The Express Tribune. “The two suspects were caught during a searching-and-combing operation in the Rawat area around T Chowk. They were carrying the explosives in bags.”

When the police tried to stop the suspects, they resisted and tried to run away,  but were caught after a brief chase, the police informed.

The suspects have been identified as Sadaqat Khan, a resident of Bagh in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Anwarul Haq Abbasi, a resident of Abbottabad district.

The Sihala Police Station has registered a case against the accused under the Explosives Act and further investigations are underway.

The two suspects were arrested from Rawat on the same day as the killings of two members of a religious organisation and a policeman in separate incidents in other parts of the capital.

This is the third time in six months that the police have claimed to foil an alleged terrorist bid on the capital.

In August, the Islamabad Police seized a car rigged with explosives from a house in Bhara Kahu, and picked up a suspect, Hammad Adil, in connection with the alleged terror plot. Adil later confessed that he and some accomplices had planned and carried out the assassinations of Federal Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Federal Investigation Agency prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali.

On September 7, 2013, the police had also seized a large cache of weapons and remote-controlled planes in separate incidents from a house in sector G-15/1, which they believe may have been used to launch an aerial assault.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5^th, 2014.