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Posted on 01/15/2003 2:22:16 PM PST by knighthawk
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - An Islamic militant said Wednesday that he bought and prepared the car used in a suicide bombing that killed 11 French engineers in southern Pakistan.
Bashir Ahmed, speaking one day after police raided his hide-out and arrested him, told reporters he was in the car until shortly before it crashed into a bus carrying the French engineers in Karachi in May. He also said he had fought in Afghanistan and that his greatest regret was that he never met Osama bin Laden.
Sitting in a Karachi police office, Ahmed said he had met a man in a mosque who asked him to buy a car. He was accompanied by Mohammed Rashid - the suicide bomber - when he bought the vehicle.
He and a group of men then spent the night in an apartment. Ahmed said at first he did not know what was planned but during the night there was a lot of aggressive talk about "infidels."
"Rashid especially kept on talking about jihad (holy war) and life after death," Ahmed said.
In the morning, after prayers, the group loaded the car with explosives. Ahmed and Rashid drove toward the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi.
Shortly before reaching the hotel, Ahmed said, "Rashid asked me to get out of the driving seat and walk toward the hotel. I kept walking and heard an explosion when I was near the park."
Eleven engineers and three other people - including the suicide bomber - died in the May 8 explosion. The engineers were employees of France's state-owned naval construction service and were building a submarine that Pakistan had bought from France.
Police said Ahmed belongs to Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen al-Almi, a splinter group of Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, or Movement of Holy Warriors - an al-Qaida-affiliated extremist group whose members fought alongside the Taliban during U.S.-led air strikes in Afghanistan.
Ahmed admitted he was in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sept. 11, and regretted he had not met bin Laden when the al-Qaida chief was in the city after the terror attacks.
"I was on front line duty when Osama bin Laden visited. It was too late when I got back," he said.
Ahmed said he left Afghanistan about six weeks after Sept. 11 because "leaders advised us to leave due to deteriorating situations."
Ahmed's arrest came a week after another key suspect in the bombing, Asif Zaheer, admitted packing the explosives into the car. Police are searching for four more men.
Hopefully, he will soon.
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