Islamabad, June 28: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has informed Pakistan that the al Qaeda-linked Al Kini group was behind a series of terrorist attacks in the country, including last year’s suicide car bombing of the Marriott Hotel.
The FBI has asked Pakistan’s Federal Investigating Agency to share its findings on these attacks that were gathered through interrogation of arrested suspects to help hunt down the top members of the Al Kini group.
In its latest communication to the FIA, the FBI said the terror cells of the Al Kini group were involved in the bombing of the Marriott, the suicide attack in Rawalpindi that killed the army’s surgeon general, Lt Gen Mushtaq Baig, and a bomb attack on a police station in Sargodha, the Dawn newspaper reported today.
The Al Kini group is named after Usama Al Kini alias Azmarai, who was the al Qaeida chief for Pakistan until he was killed in a drone attack in North Waziristan last year.
It is not clear who heads the al Qaida network in Pakistan now but the FBI’s correspondence suggests terror cells loyal to Al Kini are still operating as a separate group and carrying out attacks in Pakistan.
The deadliest of the known attacks by the group was the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September last year. Nearly 60 people, including the Czech envoy, two US Marines and another American national, were killed in that attack.
The FBI had asked FIA and Islamabad police to share the findings of their probe which could help in capturing three persons described as absconders, including a man identified as Ibraruddin Syed, the Dawn quoted a source as saying.
The source said information collected from Omar Farouk, an arrested member of the Al Kini group, revealed that the organisation had financed two terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2007, including an attack on the Sarghoda police station.
A joint investigation team headed by FIA chief Tariq Pervez, had investigated the Marriott bombing.
Mohammad Usman, a resident of Hayatabad in Peshawar, Rana Illyas Ahmed of Sumanderi near Faisalabad, and Hameed Afzal of Toba Tek Singh, were arrested by Pakistani security agencies for alleged involvement in the Marriott bombing and are currently facing trial in an anti-terror court.
The source said following FBI’s request, the FIA chief had sought permission from the federal government to share its findings with the US agency as three Americans were killed in the attack. The FBI has also sought a meeting with the team that probed the Marriott bombing and joint efforts to bring culprits to book.
The FIA has been requested to allow the FBI to carry out forensic tests in their laboratories on pieces of the explosive-laden truck, engine and shrapnel found after the bombing of the hotel.
The FBI has apparently stepped up efforts to collect information in liaison with the FIA and other Pakistani security agencies to tighten the noose around the Al Kini network, which many believe to be the most effective al Qaida wing within Pakistan.
—Agencies