Posted on 05/02/2004 4:08:56 PM PDT by blam
Mass al-Qa'eda jailbreak foiled by Karachi police
By Massoud Ansari in Karachi
(Filed: 02/05/2004)
Pakistani police have foiled a plot by militants linked to al-Qa'eda to attack a high-security prison and help 30 of the country's most dangerous terrorist suspects to escape.
Heavily armed paramilitary troops have been ordered to patrol the streets around the main prison in Karachi and police with assault rifles have been stationed on watchtowers and at its gates since the discovery last week of the plan to blow a hole in the outer walls.
As a bomb on a lorry was to be detonated outside, the 30 terrorist suspects planned to set off a series of smaller bombs inside the prison and, in the ensuing chaos, use smuggled weapons to effect their escape.
"They planned to use a remote-control bomb to destroy an outside wall of the prison, so those inside could escape," a prison official said. The plan was set for this week.
Almost 5,000 prisoners, including 180 hardcore Islamists belonging to outlawed militant groups, are housed in Karachi's main, colonial-era jail. They include militants awaiting trial for their alleged involvement in assassination attempts on Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, suicide attacks at the American consulate in Karachi, the killing of 11 French engineers and other terrorist acts.
Investigations into the escape attempt uncovered an extremely lax regime at the prison. Many terrorist suspects were housed five to a cell, and all were permitted to say prayers and recite the Koran together for five hours every day at a mosque within the prison compound. "Since all these militants met at this mosque daily, they were able to sketch out their strategy to escape," said an official close to the inquiry.
Investigators said that the terrorist suspects were assisted by a lower-grade prisoner, Khuram Khan, from Mansehra in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which borders Afghanistan.
Khuram had previously been sentenced to death for his involvement in a murder case in Mansehra, but escaped to Karachi, where police were unaware of his previous record. He was arrested for possessing a pistol - a relatively minor offence. He began visiting the prison mosque, where he was persuaded by the militants to help them escape, officials say.
Because he was a lower category of prisoner his visitors were subjected to less thorough searches. Khuram was told to ask his relatives to smuggle small weapons and urea (fertiliser), potassium and other bomb-making materials into the prison.
"Khuram had asked his brother, who visited him recently, to have the small weapons concealed in the bottom of locally made sandals and to smuggle them into the jail," said an official.
The prisoners had previously experimented with building small bombs and had rehearsed setting one off, investigators discovered.
"They put small amounts of urea, potassium and other substances in a small glass bottle and detonated it inside the jail," said one official. A police officer who heard the explosion was persuaded that it must have been a tyre bursting outside the jail.
Investigators have since learned that Hafiz Zubair, a member of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group who previously trained terrorists at camps in Afghanistan, had been giving lessons in bomb-making to his fellow prisoners. "Some of the militants detained in the jail are real experts in making these bombs," an investigator said.
Prison authorities uncovered the plot when one of the men involved, fearing casualties among ordinary Karachi residents, tipped them off.
The suspected terrorists have been moved to isolation cells and are being questioned. Amanullah Niazi, deputy superintendent of Karachi prison, said: "We have locked them up in separate cells since we found out that they were planning to break out of the jail."
The police have also arrested a brother of Khuram, who has since confessed to having ordered a consignment of a dozen sandals concealing small automatic pistols in their soles, from a contact in the NW Frontier province.
The authorities are planning to transfer the suspects to different prisons around Pakistan, an official said. "It would be very difficult to keep them in an isolated cell for a long time. This is the best way to avoid a major mishap in future, because we know that keeping all of them at one place can turn to be a disaster."
Shoot them. 'Pod.
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