Safoora attack suspects remanded in other cases

They have been implicated in the murders of policemen as well as activist Sabeen Mahmud.

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court remanded on Wednesday three suspects of the Safoora bus attack in cases of murdering civil society activist Sabeen Mahmud and policemen till June 15.

The brutal bus massacre claimed the lives of 45 members of the Ismaili community on May 13. The alleged mastermind of the attack, Tahir Hussain Minhas alias Saeen, as well as Saad Aziz alias Tin Tin and Asadur Rehman alias Malik were produced by the officials of three different police stations - Defence, Preedy and Arambagh - before ATC-III in a number of cases.

The suspects, handcuffed and with faces covered, sat in the courts' corridor for over an hour as they awaited their turn before the judge. The hearing, which only lasted a couple of minutes, took place inside the chamber of special judge Saleem Raza Baloch, after which the suspects were taken away in armoured vehicles amid heavy security.

According to the court documents, the suspects had confessed their involvement in the killings of policemen as well as Mahmud during interrogation about other penal cases.

Mahmud, the director of The Second Floor café, was gunned down in April as she left the café with her mother after a seminar about the Baloch missing persons. Assailants on motorcycles had opened fire on her car near the DHA Library. She succumbed to her wounds on the way to the hospital while her mother, who later registered a complaint with the police, sustained injuries.

The documents submitted in court by the police did not mention the affiliation of the suspects with any militant outfit and nor did they reveal the motives behind the killings. However, they discussed the bus attack, in which the suspects are yet to be implicated, and mentioned the evidence seized from the suspects, which includes weapons and clothing.

The judge remanded the suspects to police custody till June 15 and ordered the investigation officers to submit progress reports in the next hearing of the cases.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2015.