Pakistan put on highest alert

Jang ^ | November 16, 2003 | Zia Iqbal Shahid

[Prodigal Son]

BRUSSELS: Hours after separate explosions near two synagogues in the Turkish city of Istanbul, Pakistan’s security services are reported to have been put on their unprecedented highest alert amid intelligence reports that international gangs of terrorists may launch terrorist attacks in Pakistan during the week when friends and relatives of Aimal Kansi are observing his death anniversary, reliable security sources in Brussels told The News.

Security officials, closely connected to the International Security Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), under the command of Nato, said that security in Pakistan would have to remain extra tight as several international intelligence agencies have confirmed that Pakistan might be the next target of terrorists after attacks in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Nato last summer took over command of the 5,500-troop International Security Assistance Force based in Kabul and believes that "if normalisation doesn’t come to Afghanistan, then the Taliban will be back, and so will al-Qaeda,".

The security officials in Brussels said that the international security agencies which have sent the latest intelligence reports to their Pakistani counterparts had also warned the Turkish government of terrorists’ attacks one week before car bombs rocked Istanbul’s largest synagogue, the Neve Shalom, in Beyoglu district, and another synagogue nearby.

International security agencies claimed that their reports on imminent terrorist attacks in Pakistan were plausible as ‘sympathisers of Aimal Kansi were still active in Pakistan’. Aimal Khan Kansi, a Pakistani national convicted of the murder of two CIA employees was executed on November 14, 2002 by lethal injection in the US state of Virginia. Kansi, 38, was convicted of the 1993 killings in a shooting rampage outside the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Kansi’s execution triggered series of reprisal attacks in Pakistan. The US embassy in Islamabad had been under tight security since then. Based on the intelligence information, the US administration has also issued a travel advisory to the US citizens intending to travel to Pakistan sending a strong signal that Pakistan may face terrorist attacks in near future, the source said.

Responding to the warning indicating that terrorist attacks in Pakistan are imminent, Pakistan has sent fresh messages to international security agencies saying that Pakistan remained committed to its campaign against extremism aimed at rooting out the evil of terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, the source told.

Pakistan’s frontline role in the war against terrorism is receiving plaudits in the Western world as Western Security agencies believe that the Pakistani government has arrested 500 al-Qaeda operatives during the last two years after successfully destroying dozens of terrorist cells, the security official said citing an official report received from Pakistan.