PAKISTAN: Ex-navy commando and brother detained after militant attack on naval air base in Karachi

Record ID: 353262

  • Title: PAKISTAN: Ex-navy commando and brother detained after militant attack on naval air base in Karachi
  • Date: 31st May 2011
  • Summary: KARACHI, PAKISTAN (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (MAY 29, 2011) (ISPR) BOUNDARY WALL OF MEHRAN BASE, HEADQUARTERS OF PAKISTAN'S NAVAL AIRBASE BARBED WIRE BROKEN WHERE MILITANTS ALLEGEDLY ENTERED THE BASE RED FLAG TO MARK THE PLACE WHERE ONE OF THE MILITANTS WAS KILLED VARIOUS OF SURVEILLANCE TOWER BUILDING OF THE NAVAL BASE POCK-MARKED WITH BULLET SHELLS BUILDING DAMAGED BY FIRING
  • Embargoed: 15th June 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Pakistan, Pakistan
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVAEH9BP9R3NY590TQKAP09LCIOB
  • Story Text: Pakistani security officials have detained a former navy commando and his brother in connection with the militant attack on a naval air base this month, intelligence officials and relatives said on Monday (May 30).
    Last week's brazen attack on the PNS Mehran base in Karachi, the headquarters of Pakistan's naval air wing, embarrassed the military and raised fresh doubts about its ability to protect its bases after a similar raid on the army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi in 2009.
    Kamran Ahmed, who was sacked from the navy about 10 years ago, and his younger brother, Zaman, were picked up from the eastern city of Lahore on Friday, five days after the attack that killed at least 10 military personnel.
    Imran Ahmed, another brother who was not arrested, told reporters the two were taken away by intelligence officials on Friday (May 27)
    "Eight to ten people came and went upstairs. They handcuffed my elder brother, brought him down and put him into their vehicle. My younger brother, who works as an agent for the Sui Gas company, was standing outside. He saw all this and went up to them. He called me and our father. We said we would be there shortly. But after five minutes when I called, my younger brother's phone was off. When we arrived here, we learnt that both had been taken away," Ahmed said.
    An intelligence official on condition of anonymity said the brothers had been detained in connection with the naval base attack and were under interrogation.
    An earlier arrest of a suspect in the Mehran base attack led to the arrest of the Ahmed brothers.
    A second intelligence official said Kamran Ahmed served at Mehran and was court-martialled for assaulting a senior officer.
    The military court declared him mentally unfit for the job.
    He was also under suspicion after a suicide attack on the naval war college in Lahore in 2008 but was not detained, the official said, adding that the suspect arrested earlier said Ahmed provided information about the base to a militant network, which carried out the attack.
    However, neighbours said Ahmed had been living in the locality for almost eleven years and they had not noticed anything suspicious about him.
    "I have never seen anything bad or wrong about the boy; either that he was on drugs or was associating with the wrong people. He had no association with anybody like that," said Fareed Khan, a next door neighbour.
    The Pakistani Taliban, which is allied to al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack on the Mehran base, but many analysts believe they had inside help.
    A group of between four and six militants besieged the base for 16 hours and destroyed two P-3C Orion aircraft from the Unites States, crucial for Pakistan's maritime surveillance capabilities.
    Pakistan has faced a wave of assaults over the last few years, many of them claimed by the Pakistani Taliban and other al Qaeda-linked militant groups.
    In October 2009, a small group of militants attacked the Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, taking 42 people hostage, including several officers. By the end of the day-long siege, nine gunmen, 11 soldiers and three hostages were dead.
    The Taliban have stepped up attacks since the killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid in a Pakistani garrison town earlier this month.
    The raid embarrassed the military, which has been unable to explain how the al Qaeda chief hid in the country for years or how the Americans could launch the attack deep inside their territory.
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