Afghan intelligence officials said they had broken up a cell that plotted to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai, arresting six people in Kabul who they claimed were affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Haqqani militant group.
Intelligence service spokesman Latifullah Mashal said on Wednesday that the cell included one of Karzai’s bodyguards, as well as a professor at Kabul university and three college students.
Mashal described the cell as the “most sophisticated and educated group in Kabul,” and said that it had assisted Pakistani militants sent to the Afghan capital to carry out terror attacks.
He did not say when they were arrested.
He said the group, which also allegedly planned attacks in Kabul, the US and Europe, was recruited by an Egyptian and a Bangladeshi based in Pakistan.
Afghan officials have been increasingly vocal in publicly accusing Pakistan and its Inter--Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of maintaining ties with militants, including the Haqqani group.
On Tuesday, they claimed that Pakistani officials had advance knowledge of the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Pakistan has denied the charges, but the accusations have further strained relations between the two nations, which share a long border.
The Haqqani militant group, a lethal threat to US-led coalition forces, has been blamed by US intelligence officials and others for a number of high-profile attacks in Kabul in recent years, including hotel bombings and the assault last month on the US embassy.
ASSASSINATION PLAN
Mashal identified the two recruiters as an Egyptian named Sayifullah and a man from Bangladesh named Abdullah, who were based in Miram Shah, the capital of Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, where the Haqqani group and other militants operate with relative freedom.
Mashal said the six Afghans were recruited “to carry out suicide attacks in Kabul, plan and coordinate bigger international attacks in the US and parts of Europe and a luxury hotel in Kabul.”
“They also were responsible for recruiting one of the key security guards of President Karzai’s protective services. They had a plan to assassinate President Karzai maybe during his travels or trips to the provinces,” the Afghan intelligence spokesman said.
He did not disclose details about attacks the cell reportedly planned in the US or Europe.
Those arrested were Dr Emal Habib Asadullah, a medical professor and director of microbiology at Kabul University; Mubullah Ahmadi, who is from Karzai’s hometown of Karz in southern Afghanistan, and who worked as a guard at the presidential palace; Rahmatullah Ramin, a fourth year medical student at Kabul University; Parwez, identified by only one name, who was studying at a private university in Kabul; Abdul Hamid Mashal, a university student; and Abdul Bashir, a man from Kapisa Province in eastern Afghanistan, who was living in Kabul.
WELL-POSITIONED
Several of the individuals received explosives and weapons training in Peshawar, Pakistan, Mashal said.
The group had access to US$150,000 in a bank account in Kabul, he said, as well as access to computers and high-tech equipment, he said.
With its university ties, the cell was also well positioned to win more recruits, he said.
“The main purpose of the group was to kill high-ranking Afghan figures and identify guest houses used by foreigners or other potential targets in Kabul,” he said.
Karzai has escaped at least four attempts on his life since he took power in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
In April 2008, militants opened fire with automatic weapons and rockets on a ceremony in Kabul. Karzai, ministers and ambassadors scrambled for cover and escaped unharmed, although three people were killed, including a lawmaker.
In June 2007, Taliban militants fired six rockets that landed near a school yard where Karzai was meeting with local leaders and residents in Ghazni Province. No one was hurt.
In September 2004, militants fired rockets at a US helicopter taking Karzai to the eastern city of Gardez in Paktia Province. The rockets missed the helicopter as it approached a landing zone.
Another attempt on Karzai’s life took place in September 2002, when a former Taliban fighter dressed in an Afghan army uniform fired at him as he traveled in a motorcade in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
Karzai was not hurt, but the provincial governor was wounded. The attacker was killed by Karzai’s bodyguards.
MILITANT KILLED
Separately, the US-led coalition in Afghanistan said on Wednesday that a senior leader of the Haqqani network had been killed in an airstrike in the eastern part of the country.
The coalition said the militant leader, identified only as Dilawar, was killed on Tuesday in the Musa Khel district of Khost Province.
Dilawar operated along the border between Khost and Paktika provinces, running weapons, moving foreign fighters and coordinating attacks on Afghan forces, the coalition said.
Afghan and NATO forces have conducted more than 530 operations this year to try to disrupt the Haqqani network, which has ties to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
So far this year, more than 20 Haqqani leaders have been killed and more than 1,400 suspected Haqqani insurgents have been captured, the coalition said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema