Nanga Parbat incident: Agencies claim arrest of another suspect

G-B authorities previously announced that they arrested 11 suspects including alleged mastermind connected to incident

ISLAMABAD:

Seven months after the murders of 10 foreign mountaineers and their Pakistani cook at a Nanga Parbat base camp in Diamer District of Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), security agencies on Monday claimed they have arrested a key suspect from the federal capital.

G-B authorities had previously announced that they had arrested 11 suspects including an alleged mastermind connected to both the Nanga Parbat incident and an attack that had left an army colonel and two police officers investigating the case dead in Chilas last August, according to reports published in The Express Tribune.

Unofficial statements by police officials suggest a joint team of G-B and Islamabad Police made the latest arrest from a seminary in the capital over the weekend. The suspect, who has been handed over to the G-B law enforcers, has been identified as Rahim Khan.

On June 22, 2013, gunmen in local paramilitary force uniform stormed a base camp on the Diamer face of the 8,126-metre high Nanga Parbat, Pakistan’s second-highest peak, and shot dead three Ukrainians, two Slovaks, two Chinese, one American of Chinese origin, one Lithuanian and a Nepali Sherpa. A Pakistani cook accompanying them was also killed, while some other local members of the crew were spared.

One Chinese mountaineer had escaped with injuries.

A new faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Junoodul Hafsa, had claimed responsibility for the attack and an investigation report presented by the G-B government to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Relations in November had suggested the militants had originally planned to kidnap the foreigners for ransom.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2014.