The great news keeps pouring in tonight: from Pakistan we hear of the capture of Safeer Ahmed, alias Muhammad Azeem, alias Umair in Lahore. JeM is AQ and Taliban aligned, and Safeer is (was) skilled at making IED’s and EFP’s.
From the Daily Times, Pakistan:
The police have arrested eight terrorist suspects here with links to banned militant outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad and the Taliban, police said.
The eight men are believed to have been behind an attack on a missionary school near Murree on August 5, 2002, killing six Pakistanis; and a grenade attack on a church in Taxila four days later in which four nurses were killed, Lahore police chief Malik Muhammad Iqbal told a press conference on Sunday.
The suspects include Safeer Ahmed, alias Muhammad Azeem, alias Umair, who was wanted by the Punjab government, which had a Rs 1 million bounty on his head.
Safeer, Mufti Sagher Ahmed, Ghulam Qadir and Muhammad Yasir Wifaq were arrested from a bus stand on Saturday night, while Muhammad Siddique, Abdul Moeed, Ubaidullah Asghar and Syed Muhammad Masood were arrested from a house in Iqbal Park, Ittefaq Town in a predawn operation on Sunday.
Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Iqbal said that Safeer was planning terrorist plots in Lahore. He said they had been trained in use of firearms and making remote-controlled bombs “in a neighbouring country”. Police also seized a large quantity of arms, ammunition and bomb-making material from the suspects’ hideout in Ittefaq Town.
He said the suspects had confessed they were part of the Jamiatul Furqan, a splinter group of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, which was banned in 2002. They had also confessed to the attacks in Murree and Taxila, he said.
In a separate event, two incompetent Jihadi’s blew themselves up in Pakistan instead of the warehouse intended. They must be scraping the bottoms of thrown-out shoes for these guys.
A Yakatoot police station official said two unidentified people were planting a bomb in a Degure & Logistic warehouse when the bomb went off at 1:30am killing both of them on the spot. He said they appeared to be Afghans in their mid-twenties. Vehicles carrying goods for American forces in Afghanistan use the warehouse, he added.
A police statement said three time bombs, hand grenades and two kg of explosives were also recovered, which were later defused by the bomb disposal squad. A broken AK-47 and a pistol were also recovered from the crime scene. The bodies of both suspects were sent for DNA tests, it said.
Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Abdul Majeed Marwat told Daily Times, “We cannot rule out Taliban involvement in the incident, as the bombers tried to disrupt the supplies for American soldiers in Afghanistan.” Commenting on an earlier Peshawar bus terminal explosion, the CCPO said it was a continuation of the previous blasts in Peshawar.