Police were on red alert in the southern city of Karachi yesterday, fearing a militant backlash after a top Pakistani al-Qaeda suspect wanted for two assassination attempts against President General Pervez Musharraf was killed in a paramilitary raid.
Amjad Hussain Farooqi, also accused in the 2002 slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, died in the shootout Sunday at a house in the southern town of Nawabshah. Two or three other men, one of them an Islamic cleric, were arrested.
Fayyaz Leghari, deputy chief of police in Karachi, said security was on "red alert" in the city -- known as a hotbed for Islamic militants -- with increased patrols around foreign consulates and key government offices, and more plainclothes officers at sensitive locations.
Farooqi, a Pakistani aged about 32, was one of the most wanted men in the country after security officials revealed in May that he had helped plan two bombings against Musharraf near the capital in December last year that narrowly missed the general. Alleged co-planner, Libyan al-Qaeda suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi, remains at large.
In Washington, a US official said intelligence services had been unable to obtain full confirmation that Farooqi had been killed although that appeared to be the case. The Americans consider Farooqi "a key al-Qaeda figure," the official said, speaking on condition he not be further identified.
Pakistani officials say they are certain that the dead man is Farooqi, although DNA tests have yet to be completed to confirm the identity of the body.
Farooqi is believed to have been an associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the reputed al-Qaeda No. 3 captured in Pakistan last year.
Pakistan has burnished its credentials as a key US ally against al-Qaeda in recent months. The government says it has arrested more than 70 terror suspects since mid-July, including an alleged Pakistani computer expert for al-Qaeda and a Tanzanian wanted for the US embassy bombings in east Africa in 1998.
Authorities hailed Farooqi's killing as another breakthrough, and information gleaned from the suspects captured in Sunday's raid led to the arrest of another Islamic militant early yesterday, police said.
Paramilitary police raided a home around dawn in Sukkur, 350km northeast of Karachi, arresting Khalid Ansari, known for links with Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Sunni Muslim militant group, a local police official said on condition of anonymity. Two of Ansari's brothers were also arrested.
The security forces had blared warnings over loudspeakers to residents in the poor residential neighborhood not to come out of their homes. The three men were blindfolded and led away by intelligence officials, he said.
It was unclear whether Ansari or his brothers faces any charges.
Officials have yet to formally identify the suspects who were arrested in Sunday's raid in which Farooqi was killed, but say they are all Pakistanis.
An intelligence official in Nawabshah, speaking on condition of anonymity, named one as Abdul Rehman, whom he said was a teacher at a local Islamic seminary and had rented the house for Farooqi two months ago.
Another intelligence official named a second suspect as Yaqoob Farooqi. It was unclear if he was related to the dead suspect.
Authorities also seized from the house a laptop computer, CDs, militant literature, some grenades, a wire cutter and several photos, the intelligence source in Nawabshah said.
He did not disclose who was in the pictures.
Zainul Abideen, who lived on the same street in Nawabshah -- where dozens of police and paramilitary rangers blocked access yesterday -- recounted seeing Farooqi before.
"He is the same man whose pictures we saw today in the newspapers. I have seen him going and coming on his bicycle," he said.
Farooqi's family say that he had been missing since Pearl was abducted in Karachi in January 2002.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS