The most extensive military investigation of a crime in
Pakistan completed last month has revealed that a Pakistani
man considered the key contact person for the top al-Qaeda
leadership wove a web of religious freaks in Jihadi groups,
Pakistan Air Force, Army, Rawalpindi police and prison staff
to execute two assassination attempts on President Pervez
Musharraf in Rawalpindi on December 14 and 25, last year,
officials said.
The military investigation of the two
successive attempts on President Musharraf in December
was headed by the Commander 10 Corps (Rawalpindi), Lieutenant-General
Ashfaq Kiyani, who had marshalled dozens of military investigators
for about four months until the president was informed
about the completion of the investigation and identification
of all suspects last month.
During the investigation, that took the
military investigators to five Punjab towns, Karachi,
Peshawar and tribal areas,about 150 suspects, including
about four dozen PAF and Pakistan Army non-commissioned
personnel, were questioned.
The investigation, sources said, showed
big administrative holes in Pakistan Air Force’s
security apparatus that, before the latest investigation,
kept no record on the movement of its personnel to and
from its official residential facilities after office
hours.
The Air Intelligence, intelligence wing
of the PAF, surprisingly had no wind that its personnel
- about two dozen at the Chaklala air base - had been
attending meetings with religious extremists and in the
first week of December were making active preparations
at the Air Force base to bomb the presidential motorcade.
The military investigation has also led
to the arrest of the civilian religious extremists, including
three clerics involved in the indoctrination of the PAF
technicians and planning of the attacks.
A small group of religious extremists
who had stored and supplied the C4 explosives to the Air
Force technicians and the suicide bombers have also been
arrested. The investigation also traced the origin of
this particular consignment of the C4 to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan,
officials said.
In the wake of the recent investigation
the Pakistan Air Force has already completed an extensive
overhaul of its internal security procedures that also
included regular screening of religious freaks.
The military investigation headed by Lt-Gen
Kiyani also cited lapses in president’s security
codes and arrangements. Police are responsible for General
Musharraf’s security as the President of Pakistan.
Presidential security codes are governed through an extensively
laid procedure called "Blue Book". But, a special
detachment of the Military Intelligence is responsible
for his security as the Chief of Army Staff.
The investigation has discovered glaring
loopholes in the president’s security arrangements
on December 14 and 25. The investigators, sources said,
were stunned to learn that the Air Force technicians spent
two days, making several trips beneath the Lai Bridge
to strap large quantities of the C4 explosives to the
pillars of the bridge, all without being noticed either
by the police or the Military Intelligence, which was
supposed to keep an eye on this presidential route.
The military investigation also focussed
on the leakage of information about the jamming device
in the president’s car that had delayed the remote-controlled
trigger for the bomb blast at the Lai Bridge on December
14. This abortive bid on the president’s life was
followed by a report in the media that said the jamming
device in his car protected the president’s life.
This piece of information, the investigators
believed, prompted the terrorists to use the suicide bombers
for the December 25 attack. On December 14, attackers
- identified as low-level technicians of Pakistan Air
Force - had blasted the Lai Bridge seconds after President
Musharraf’s car, on its way from the airport to
Army House, passed over it in Rawalpindi, the military
investigation concluded.
"We can say that the first attempt
was a near exclusive job of more than a dozen Pakistan
Air Force brainwashed technicians who lived nearby in
a PAF residential facility," said an official. The
Air Force technicians were directed, motivated and armed
by the Pakistani contact person of al-Qaeda, officials
said.
On December 25, the investigation has
concluded, the two suicide bombers who rammed two cars
laden with explosive into the president’s motorcade,
were motivated by the same al-Qaeda contact aided by his
contacts in the Rawalpindi police and a staff member at
Rawalpindi prison.
"It was a compartmentalised operation
and the PAF technicians had no idea about the suicide
attack that followed their failed bid to blow up the president’s
car over the Lai Bridge," said an informed official.
It is now known that the two suicide car
bombers who nearly missed the president’s car were
getting live information on his movement through a police
official, assigned to Rawalpindi’s Civil Lines police
station.
It has been found that a few Pakistan
Army officials had clues about the operation, but they
failed to report the suspicious activities to their superiors.
Official sources familiar with the investigation said
that a nation-wide hunt is now on to track Amjad Farooqi,
a key accused in the kidnapping and murder case of Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
His connections, sources said, have been
traced to Shafiq and Jamil Ahmad, the two suicide bombers
in the second assassination attempt against the president.
Officials said Amjad Farooqi was also an alleged mastermind
behind the suicide car bomb attack at the US consulate
in Karachi in June 2002.
"Amjad Farooqi alias Imtiaz Farooqi
alias Haider alias Mansoor Hussain is now the most wanted
man in Pakistan," said an official who also revealed
that the police and the intelligence agencies nearly missed
him in Karachi, Faisalabad and Quetta in recent weeks.
"We need to catch him to break the
back of al-Qaeda and terrorism in Pakistan," an official
said. Pakistani security officials said that the investigation
into the Daniel Pearl case and subsequent probes into
other cases of terrorism proved that he was in direct
contact with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, a key al-Qaeda lieutenant
of Osama bin Laden arrested in Rawalpindi last year.
"His arrest from the residence of
a serving Pakistan Army major showed that al-Qaeda had
an access to some people in the military services,"
an official said. Pakistani officials said three Pakistan
Army officials who were detained in connection with Khalid
Sheikh’s arrest had no involvement in the twin assassination
attempts against the president last year.
