SANA

ISLAMABAD: Nine alleged militants accused over a string of attacks that killed dozens of people and damaged the Danish embassy in Islamabad are expected to appear before a Pakistan court Friday.
The suspects, whom police officials said were linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, are expected to be charged under anti-terror legislation and remanded into custody for up to 14 days.
‘They’ll be produced before the court (Friday),’ said Rao Iqbal, police chief in Rawalpindi — the city close to Islamabad where authorities said the nine-member gang was seized this week.
A senior police investigator said the suspects were wanted chiefly in connection with five high-profile suicide attacks, including one outside the Danish embassy and another on an Italian restaurant in Islamabad.
Six people including a Dane were killed when the devastating car bomb exploded outside the embassy on June 2 last year, damaging the mission, residences of the Indian and Dutch ambassadors and nearly destroying a nearby UN agency.
A Turkish woman aid worker died and at least 10 other foreigners were wounded, including four American FBI officials, in a bombing at the popular Luna Caprese Italian eatery on March 15.
More than 1,500 people have been killed in a huge surge of militant attacks across Pakistan over the last year and a half, waged by militants opposed to the government’s support for the so-called US-led war on terror.
Police said the Rawalpindi gang helped orchestrate a suicide bombing near Islamabad’s Red Mosque on July 7 that killed 19 people, mostly police.
They were also accused over the Feb 25 killing of Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig, Pakistan’s most senior military officer to die in a post-2001 attack, and the Feb 4 bombing of Pakistan army medical corps bus.
Police said the arrests marked the highest number of suspected militants captured from one gang from Rawalpindi since Pakistan joined the US-led ‘war on terror’ after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
‘They were involved in logistics and providing suicide bombers to hit targets,’ the senior police official said.
According to senior police officers, the Rawalpindi nine had links to Usama al-Kini, Al-Qaeda’s top commander in Pakistan, who was killed in a US missile strike in South Waziristan on Jan 1.
US officials say Pakistan’s lawless northwestern tribal areas have become a safe haven for hundreds of militants who launch attacks on Afghan and foreign forces across the border in Afghanistan.
One senior police official identified the gang’s ring leader as Mohammed Illyas, also known as Qari Jamil, a former prisoner held for three years at the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
Pakistan rejects western accusations that its security forces are not doing enough to clamp down on the plague of militancy.
Police officials said the gang also provided suicide bombers for an Independence Day attack in Lahore on Aug 14 last year and an earlier attack on the Naval War College, also in Lahore