Police on Tuesday announced the arrest of the ‘mastermind’ behind last month's deadly attack on a Rangers camp in Karachi, adding that the attackers were trained and directed from Afghanistan. The attack took place on the night of June 27 when heavily armed militants stormed the Pakistan Rangers (Sindh) headquarters in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), three Rangers personnel were martyred and four others were injured.

Security forces killed three attackers during the operation and captured a fourth, who was identified as an Afghan national. Addressing a joint press conference with Sindh Home Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar, Karachi City Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Irfan Bahadur said investigations had uncovered an Afghanistan-based network responsible for planning and coordinating the attack. SSP Bahadur identified the mastermind as Qari Basheer alias Qari Habib, who was arrested by Rangers during a follow-up operation after the attack.

Lanjar also said, “All their (terrorists’) handlers were guiding them from Afghan soil that maximum damage should be done in the city and that Karachi’s peace be sabotaged by taking people hostage and public terrorism be spread.” He added that after the incident, law enforcement agencies (LEAs) “discovered a network of facilitators involved in the attack through a comprehensive effort”. Providing details on the attack, SSP Bahadur listed the “four phases” of carrying out the attack: “First of all, the planning and training of terrorists in Afghanistan.

Secondly, four Afghan terrorists being taken from Afghanistan to Karachi.” The SSP added that there was “backing from Afghanistan to run the facilitator group in Karachi”, while also giving them instructions “till the last stage from Afghanistan”. “And lastly, the provision of weapons, ammunition and suicide jackets to terrorists,” he said. The SSP identified the suicide bomber as Janaan, a resident of Afghanistan's Farah province. Another attacker, Bilal alias Hadi, was originally from Bajaur but had later moved to Kandahar.

A third militant killed in the operation, Umer Farooq, was from Afghanistan's Kunar province, while the surviving suspect, Usman Sher Mohammad, is a resident of Nangarhar. He further stated that senior leaders of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), referred to by the government as "Fitna al Khawarij," were involved in directing the operation. SSP Bahadur named Noor Wali, Sher Wali alias Mukhlisyar and TTP Shura member Saeed Shah as individuals who assigned Qari Basheer the responsibility for carrying out the attack.

In a video aired during the press conference of Qari Basheer, he could be heard saying that he met Saeed Shah in Afghanistan, who arranged his meeting with Noor Wali and Sher Wali. “They gave me a task for action against the police, army and Rangers in Karachi,” he said.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)