Pakistani arrested for attack on French engineers

KARACHI, Sept 8 (AFP) – Pakistani police said they had Thursday arrested an al-Qaeda-linked militant who allegedly planted explosives in a car used for a 2002 suicide attack that killed 11 French engineers.

Mufti Mohammad Sabir, 32, a member of the banned Sunni extremist group Harkatul Jihad-e-Islami, was planning another attack when he was seized after a shoot-out at a suburban Karachi bus terminal, police said.

“We cordoned off a bus terminal in eastern Karachi after intelligence information that a terrorist was about to enter the city for some terror attacks,” said Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil.

Police had seized a pistol and recovered one pound (less than half a kilogram) of explosives, two rocket shells, bomb-making material and 250 bullets in the raid in Karachi, the country’s largest city, Jamil said.

“We also recovered some terror guides and other literature from his bag,” Jamil told a press conference.

The May 2002 car bomb blast killed the French engineers and three Pakistani bystanders outside Karachi’s Sheraton Hotel.

Police chief Jamil said Sabir had planted the explosives with fellow militant Mohammad Sohail, who was captured in March and later jailed after being sentenced to death in absentia.

Subject: French news