Posted on 04/02/2003 2:25:42 PM PST by knighthawk
Pakistani police announced on Wednesday the capture of a leader of the outlawed Lashkar-i-Jhangvi Islamic militant group, which is linked to the killings of Westerners, Christians and Shiite Muslims.
"Shabir Ahmed was arrested from his hideout in Multan," in central Pakistan, police superintendent Murid Hussain, said. It was not clear when he was captured.
Ahmed, wanted in four separate cases of killings of followers of the minority Shiite community, had a Rs 1 million ($17,240) bounty on his head.
He was a local leader of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), meaning the 'warriors of Jhangvi', which was declared a terrorist organisation by the United States on January 30.
US and Pakistani officials have linked LJ - blamed for a raft of Shiite killings since the 1990s - to the abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, two suicide car bomb attacks in Karachi on a busload of French engineers and the US consulate, and several deadly attacks on Christians.
Among the attacks Ahmed was suspected of was the 1995 attack on the Iranian Cultural Centre, in which seven people including the director were killed.
Ahmed, paraded before reporters, told them that he had been in the army for 13 years until he deserted in 1990 and joined another Islamic extremist group, Sipah-i-Sahaba.
Like LJ, Sipah-i-Sahaba -- outlawed by President Pervez Musharraf in January 2002 -- was made up of Sunni Muslim extremists.
Ahmed said he had undergone militant training in Afghanistan in 1996 and 1997 during the hardline Taliban regime.
LJ has been linked to the Al-Qaeda terror network.
Ahmed told reporters that despite the deaths and arrests of senior LJ members, the network still existed.
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