Alleged financiers of Safoora bus attack to be grilled for 90 days

CTD tell court that suspects, identified as Salim and Suleman, had provided financial assistance to the attackers

KARACHI:

The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) informed an anti-terrorism court on Saturday about the 90-day preventive detention of two suspects alleged to have financed the assailants who carried out the Safoora bus attack.

Forty-five people, including 18 women, belonging to the Ismaili community were massacred when gunmen boarded their bus in Safoora Goth in May this year.

The CTD told the court that the suspects, identified as Salim and Suleman, had provided financial assistance to the attackers and were also linked with them. According to the investigators, the suspects belong to the business community of Punjabi Saudagaran and, in their capacity, managed and collected funds for the group behind the bloody attack. An interim charge sheet of the case suggests that the banned terrorist group, Islamic State, was behind the attack.

Read: Safoora carnage: ATC remands two more suspects to prison

The police added that the suspects have been detained for three months under section 11EEEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act, a special law that was earlier exclusive to the Rangers in the city, for interrogation about their involvement in terrorist activities. Meanwhile, the CTD also keeps the custody of two other suspects, Sheeba Ahmed and Khalid Yusuf, held in the same connection, under this special law.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2015.