The Karachi connection

Author: Wilson John
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 23, 2002
 
After Kabul and Kandahar, it is time to turn to another hub of terrorism in the neighbourhood, Karachi. If one were to draw lines on a world map linking various terrorist acts, all the lines will, without fail, cross Pakistan's port town of Karachi. Karachi is where the alma mater of all jihadis-the Binori mosque-is situated. Terrorist leaders like Maulana Mohammad Omar and Maulana Masood Azhar are students of the seminary run from the Binori mosque complex. Karachi is also the headquarters of rabid anti-Shia sectarian outfits like Sipah-e-Saheba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. For the present, I am keen to follow the trails that reveal this port town as the world's most secure place for a terrorist to hide or operate from.
 
There is irrefutable evidence, which I will present in this article later, which reveals that terrorists have been using Karachi as a transit point and a secure house both before and after carrying out terrorist acts in different parts of the world.
 
I will begin from the latest set of evidence linking Karachi with the WTC attacks of September 11. Zacarias Moussaoui, alias Shaqil, alias Abu Khalid al Sahrawi, is one of the prime accused in the attack, facing six different charges in the district court for the Eastern District of Virginia, US. Moussaoui is being charged as one of the 20 hijackers. He was trained in Pakistan. He received training in preparing explosives from Ramzi Yousuf in Karachi. Yousuf is convicted of the first bombing of WTC in 1993.
 
Intelligence agencies have so far tracked down Moussaoui's first flight to Karachi on December 9, 2000. He remained in Pakistan till February 7, 2001 after which he flew out of Karachi to London from where he flew to Chicago carrying $35,000. This is part of the money that was used by the terrorists to execute the WTC attack on September 11. What he did while in Karachi is still a mystery.
 
One of Moussaoui's associates and co-conspirator was Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the key financier of the WTC attack. Al-Hawsawi first opened a bank account in a Standard Chartered Bank branch in Dubai, UAE with a cash deposit. On the same day, another of his friends, Fayez Rashid AH Alqadi Bamihammad too opened an account in the same bank. Less than a month later, Bamihammad gave a power of attorney to Hawsawi to operate his accounts. Hawsawi picked up Bamihammad's Visa and ATM cards from the Dubai branch and shipped them to Florida between July 18 and August 1, 2001. Bamihammad was one of the terrorists who flew the United Airlines flight 175 into the World Trade Center's south tower. Investigations have since then revealed that Hawsawi transferred $375,000 to the terrorists involved in the attack through various channels, including some banks in Karachi.
 
On September 11, 2001, al-Hawsawi flew from Dubai to Karachi to take shelter.
 
The Karachi connection has come up in the investigations being carried out by the German police on three men suspected to have aided the WTC terrorists. All three were last seen at Karachi's Qaid-e-Azam airport on September 4, a week before the New York attack. The German police are pursuing one of them, Said Bahaji, more intently, simply because he is a German citizen, a computer science student who lived in Hamburg. Bahaji is one of the most wanted men not merely because his roommate was Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the WTC operation, but also because of his role in providing logistical and financial support to them. The operational base, once again, was Karachi, Pakistan, from where he flew to on September 3, telling his family that he was taking up a job in a computer software firm. He was in touch with someone in Karachi several months before that. One of the key evidence was a packet of religious literature seized from his flat. The postmark showed it to have originated from Karachi on March 30. The name and address of the sender on the packet-Aslam Hyat with an address in Gulshan-e-Iqbal-was fictitious. In Karachi, Bahaji and his friends stayed at Hotel Embassy for two days before disappearing. Nothing much is known about the trio except that they certainly had a key role to play in the WTC attack and had disappeared from Karachi. The last piece of evidence was an e-mail sent by Bahaji to his mother in Hamburg which read: "Greetings fromPakistan. Praise be to Allah. I am fine. I won't be phoning often ... it's too expensive. All is good".
 
Karachi is also at the heart of the 1993 bombing of WTC. The plot to bomb the Center was hatched in Karachi by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, a resident of Mand in Makran, Turbat district, Balochistan. Yousef became a terrorist after he came in close contact with members of Hamas, a terrorist group operating in Palestine. Financed by Saudi nationals living in Karachi, Yousef became an expert in making explosives. Yousef is the common link between the 1993 and 2001 WTC attacks. Two of those he trained in explosives was Moussaoui and Ahmad Ajaj. Ajaj is convicted of the 1993 truck bombing of WTC. Ajaj got in touch with Yousef in Karachi after he finished training at Camp Khaldan situated along the Pakistan-Afghan border. After finalising their plans, the duo took a flight from Karachi to New York on August 31, 1992. Yousef had a fake passport but managed to board the plane after bribing an official at the Karachi airport. On February 26, 1993 the WTC was attacked, and on the same day, Yousef took a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Kennedy Airport to Karachi from where he quickly fled to Quetta. It took the US authorities two years to track him down and bring him to justice.
 
It should not surprise anyone that Karachi is the common link in the list of 20 terrorists India wants Pakistan to extradite. Dawood Ibrahim, accused of planning and financing 13 explosions in Mumbai in 1993 in which almost 300 people died, lives in Clinton, Karachi; Chhota Shakeel, a key associate of Dawood and wanted for murder, extortion, kidnapping and blackmailing businessmen and film stars in India, lives in Karachi; "Tiger" Ibrahim Memon, prime accused in the Mumbai blasts and wanted in connection with murder, extortion, kidnapping, terrorism and smuggling arms and explosives lives in Karachi; Ayub Memon, Ibrahim Memon's brother, lives in Karachi; Abdul Razzak, co-accused in the Mumbai blasts, lives in Karachi, Zahoor Ibrahim Mistri a member of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and wanted in connection with the hijacking of IC-814 , lives in Karachi; Shahid Akhtar Sayed, wanted in the IC-814 hijacking, lives in Karachi; Azhar Yusuf, wanted in the hijacking case, lives in Karachi; Ishaq Atta Hussain, an associate of Dawood Ibrahim wanted in connection with a conspiracy to kill Indian Home Minister LK Advani, lives in Karachi; and Sagir Sabir Ali Shaikh, also wanted in connection with the conspiracy to kill Mr Advani, also lives in Karachi.
 
There are other crucial Karachi connections which I am constrained to merely list for want of space: 1) Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, an Al Qaeda member and accused in the bombing of USS Cole, was a student of microbiology at the University of Karachi. He was first arrested for his suspected involvement in the bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad. He was released. 2) Mohammad Saddiq Odeh, convicted of bombing of two US embassies in 1998, was caught at Karachi where he had fled after the bombings. 3) Mir Amal Kansi, convicted of the 1993 shooting outside CIA headquarters in Langley, was picked up in Pakistan. He had fled to Karachi after killing two CIA agents. 4) Zayd Hassan Safarini, a member of the Abu Nidal group, had attempted hijacking PanAm Flight 73 from Karachi in 1986. After holding 379 people on board hostage, he lined up the passengers and killed 22 of them. 5) The hijackers of IC-814 had taken a PIA flight-PK806-from Karachi to Kathmandu from where they were allowed to board the Indian Airlines flight without the mandatory security check in December 1999.
 
Footnote: Is it sheer coincidence that Karachi also happens to be the city where President Pervez Musharraf's family first came to settle after the Partition?
 

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