Pakistan detains 30 suspects in Shia attack probe

Reuters ^ | 7 March 2004 | Shahid Gul Yusufzai

[Cap Huff]

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan has detained 30 people in connection with an attack this week on minority Muslim Shi'ites in the southwestern city of Quetta, which killed 44 people and wounded at least 150, police said on Sunday.

Police also registered a complaint by relatives of the slain Shi'ites against seven local members of an outlawed Sunni militant group whom they blamed them for the attack.

A senior police official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters 30 people had been arrested so far in an extensive investigation into the massacre on Tuesday, when Shi'ites were observing Ashura, one of the holiest days in their calendar.

The attack on the Shi'ite procession was the worst sectarian violence in Pakistan since a July suicide attack on a Shi'ite mosque in Quetta, which killed more than 57 people.

Tuesday's attack coincided with bomb blasts that killed at least 170 people in Iraq's holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala and the capital Baghdad.

U.S. officials linked them to al Qaeda, but Pakistani officials say they do not have any evidence suggesting the attacks in Pakistan and Iraq were in any way connected.

Relatives of the Pakistani victims named seven members of the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahabah group as being involved, although police said it was too early to pin the blame on any single group.

Over the weekend police released sketches of two suspects and offered one million rupees ($17,400) to anyone providing information that may lead to their capture.

Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali told a news conference on Saturday the government would conduct a "very deep" investigation into the attack.

The attackers used automatic weapons and five grenades on a crowd of thousands of Shi'ites, who make up some 15 percent of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim nation of 150 million people.

Residents said army and paramilitary forces were helping the police to patrol the city, still under a curfew imposed on Tuesday to prevent rioting by Shi'ites.

Enraged Shi'ites in the city of 400,000 people rampaged through Quetta after the attack, burning more than 100 shops and several homes. Residents say Sunni Muslim shop owners are furious about the vandalism.

Shi'ite leaders suspect the Quetta attack was the work of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Sunni group with links to al Qaeda that has carried out many sectarian attacks before. Witnesses said the attackers' guns were painted with the group's name.

[Cap Huff]

FYI

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the update.

[Dog]

Relatives of the Pakistani victims named seven members of the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahabah group as being involved, although police said it was too early to pin the blame on any single group.

This site lists groups connected to Al Qaeda... and guess who is named.. Sipah-e-Sahabah

Most of Al-Qaeda's membership is drawn from the two Egyptian groups: Islamic Group of Egypt (Gamaya al Islamiya) and Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Al Gamaya Al Islamiya). Khamareddine Kherbane, an Afghan veteran, was close to both the GIA and Al-Qaeda leaderships. Two Algerian groups, the GIA of Antar Zouabri and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat - GSPC) of Hassan Hattab developed ties with Al-Qaeda early on, but large-scale penetration of Algerian groups came in 1997-8. Bin Laden also cemented ties with Jaish Aden Abin al Islami of Yemen, and members of several small Islamist parties from Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and elsewhere also joined. With the exception of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayaaf Group (ASG), Al-Qaeda links with Asian Islamist groups, notably those fighting in Kashmir, developed in the second half of the 1990s. Other Al-Qaeda constituent or affiliated organizations include al Jamaa essalafya lid Daawa wal Qit al, in Nahda, Sipah e Sahaba Kashmir, Hizb-al-Islami in Kashmir, Harakat ul Mujahjideen and Harakat-ul Jihad in Kashmir, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Occupied Territories and the Islamic Party of Turkistan.

So the Pakistanis claim of no Al Qaeda involvement...is a lie.

[Cap Huff]

Good catch there. I think in the last day or two I've seen another reference somewhere to the group, but I can't remember where.

I noted on another thread that one of the Pakistani ministers was quoted in the Indian press as saying that AQ involvement could not be ruled out:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1092468/posts?page=3#3


That is a contradiction to what the same minister was supposed to have said.

[Boot Hill]

"So the Pakistanis claim of no Al Qaeda involvement...is a lie."

And since the bombings in Karbala and Baghdad are linked to the Quetta attacks through timing (within hours of each other), event (Ashura), and target (Shi'a), this tends to weaken the theory that (Shi'ite) Iran was the puppet master behind, what amounts to, a single terrorist attack, and strengthens the theory that these attacks were solely the act of al-Qa'ida and their associates.

That al-Qa'ida would make such a stupid strategic mistake, is an indicator of just how decimated the al-Qa'ida leadership has become and how out of touch that leadership is with the soldier in the field, that carries out these operations.

Weak central authority has always been the Achilles' heel of Arab and terrorist organizations, and the U.S. has capitalized on this inherent weakness as a strategy in the War on Terror. Simply brilliant!

--Boot Hill