Little progress in Chehlum day blasts case so far

source: daily times

Jundullah network too well-organised for LEAs

By Faraz Khan

KARACHI: Police have claimed time and again that they have rooted out the network of terrorist outfit Jundullah from Karachi, but apparently, activists of this group keep carrying out attacks in the city.

Investigators have so far been unable to make much progress in the Chehlum day blasts case, but they believe that Jundullah was responsible for these attacks since the method used in them is similar to one used in the Ashura day blast.

So far, police have claimed that they have solved the case of the Ashura day blast and arrested four Jundullah operatives, who were allegedly involved in the bomb blasts on Muharram 8, 9 and 10.

A source privy to the matter disclosed that police officials are still trying to understand the modus operandi used by the arrested Jundullah operatives, who were following the directives of an Egyptian Al Qaeda commander, Hamza Joffi alias Misry.

The source said scores of highly trained operatives of Jundullah are present in city, but their well-organised network makes it an arduous task for the law enforcement agencies to arrest them.

The members of Jundullah are residents of Karachi who were previously working with different terrorist outfits. They went to Wana and Waziristan where Joffi recruited them.

Investigators claim that Jundullah has been active in Karachi for the last two years and busy in various terrorist activities including financing terrorism, but the concerned agencies did not take any steps to counter this threat.

The source disclosed that Jundullah had carried out some blasts before the one on Ashura day as well during the last two years. They had carried out a bomb attack in Shah Latif town, attacked a police mobile at the Karachi airport, targeted Ranger officers at the Superhighway and involved in various other experimental terror attempts.

In 2004, Jundullah had attacked the convoy of Karachi corps commander Lieutenant General Ahsan Saleem Hayat near the Clifton bridge, following which 11 activists of the terror outfit were convicted by an anti-terrorism court.

Joffi, the founder of the local Jundullah group, has specially trained his men to explode bombs from a distance through a remote control. The arrested Jundullah men explaining their method have disclosed that they make a call on the mobile phone attached with a planted bomb which is automatically received on the fourth ring.

The received call is not enough to explode the bomb and the caller dials 999 after the call is connected and the bomb goes off.

These arrested men were not even aware of the actual identities of their colleagues till the day of their arrest, as they were being operated from Wana by Joffi, who assigned different cadres to them.

During the course of investigation, the culprits revealed that their group had recently robbed two banks including the one Mauripur area in which three including two policemen were killed.

The alleged suspects of the Ashura day blast also confessed to carrying out various other robberies and told investigators that they had sent each penny of the looted amount to their commander Joffi.