Islamabad



Four years after the May 27, 2009 fidayeen attack targeting the provincial headquarters of the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) in Lahore which killed 30 people, it has now transpired that one of the three attackers was a Maldivian national who was funded, aided and dispatched to Pakistan by a US national, only to be trained by the TTP in Waziristan.



The attack was a well-planned hybrid operation, consisting of a fidayeen assault by two gunmen to be followed by detonation of an explosive-laden vehicle by the third suicide bomber. At least 100 kilograms of C4 explosives was used to conduct the deadly attack which razed to the ground the adjoining Rescue 15 building besides partially damaging the ISI headquarters because the vehicle driver failed to breach the boundary wall of the security pylons, compelling him to detonate the explosives outside the building. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the then TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud’s No. 2, Hakimullah Mehsud, saying it was revenge for the army operation against militants in the Swat valley.



Two of the three attackers died in the assault while the ring leader, Dr Muaz alias Omar Kundi, had escaped from the crime scene. A former commander of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) who had joined the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), before finally falling in the lap of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Muaz was trained in North Waziristan as a fidayeen attacker along with a Punjabi Taliban, Sajid Butt and Ali Jalil alias Musab Sayyid, a Maldivian citizen who had traveled to Pakistan from Maldives with the aim of joining ‘Islamic’ militants.



While the Maldivian national and the Punjabi Taliban were killed in the Lahore attack, Dr Muaz was shot dead in an encounter with the law enforcement agencies on February 20, 2010 in Faisalabad while he was on his way to attack the ISI headquarters there. But there is a new twist in the case four years later, with an American national arrested by the FBI [Riaz Qadeer Khan] having been indicted on March 5, 2013 by a federal grand jury which has accused him of providing money and advice to Ali Jalil alias Musab Sayyid.



In a subsequent posthumous video released by al-Qaeda on March 3, 2010, in which he was shown getting terrorist training in Waziristan along with Muaz and Sajid, Ali Jalil took responsibility for the bombing of the ISI head office in Lahore. While announcing the arrest of Riaz Khan, 48, a naturalized US citizen living in Portland, Greg Fowler, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, said in a March 4 statement: “Those who provide material support to terrorists are just as responsible for deaths and destruction that follow as those who commit the violent acts”.



So far little is known about Riaz Khan except that he was a naturalised American citizen who was a wastewater employee with Portland city’s Environmental Services Bureau since 2007. According to the FBI indictment, Riaz Khan and Jalil had been engaged in a long email correspondence that began in 2005 and culminated in 2009 when Jalil finally reached Pakistan with Riaz’s help. Jalil and two other Maldivian citizens were earlier captured in Sri Lanka in 2006 when they were attempting to travel to Pakistan for underground military training. Jalil was convicted of preaching without a licence and was sentenced to two years’ house arrest on December 26, 2006. As he violated his house arrest, he was sentenced to four months of banishment on February 8, 2008.



As Jalil was determined to try again, he wrote to his friend Riaz Khan in October 2008 that he wants to accelerate his departure and would head for Khan’s home country. While reminding his friend of their promises in the past to embrace martyrdom in the way of Allah, Jalil told Khan in an email that he might not be able to wait for him to join the noble mission. Jalil then sought Khan’s promise to make sure that his family would be taken care of. Khan, according to the indictment, emailed him detailed instructions, advising him how to purchase his tickets, and suggesting him, not to tell his family that he didn’t have a job awaiting him in Pakistan. Riaz told Jalil not to worry about his family. “I understand your worries about your family and I will try to support them as much as possible,” he told him.



Afterwards, Jalil contacted Riaz from Sri Lanka on October 28, 2008 who subsequently arranged through an intermediary in Los Angeles to have $2,450 available for Jalil to pick up from a “trusted brother” in Pakistan. As he landed in Lahore from Colombo, he was received by some Lashkar-e-Jhangvi operatives who eventually took him to North Waziristan where he was trained in terrorism, as depicted in his posthumous video. On May 27, 2009, Jalil and two others mounted the Lahore attack that struck the regional ISI headquarters, killing Jalil and Sajid. Shortly after his death, Riaz wired $750 to Jalil’s wife. Almost ten months after his death, the media arm of al-Qaeda [As-Sahab] released Jalil’s video message wherein he claimed responsibility for the 2009 ISI office attack. The video showed Ali Jalil preparing for the attack at a training camp in Waziristan. A statement he recorded beforehand, under the pseudo name of Musab Sayyid, was also included, saying “I want my blood to be the red carpet that would take the Islamic nation to its glory”.

News International