KARACHI, July 25: Three suspected militants believed to have been behind the July 14 assassination of Allama Hasan Turabi were arrested in a pre-dawn raid on Tuesday. Police claimed that they had also identified the suicide bomber, adding that his mother’s blood samples had been sent for DNA tests.

A suicide attack killed Sindh chief of Tehrik-i-Islami Allama Hasan Turabi and his nephew Ali Imran on July 14 in front of their Abbas Town residence.

The religious leader, who was also the provincial vice-president of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, had survived an attempt on his life on April 6.

Police are still clueless about the April 11 Nishtar Park bombing that left over 50 dead and the March 2 car bomb attack near the US Consulate that killed four people, including an American diplomat.

“The suicide bomber was a 16-year-old youth of Bangladeshi extraction. His name was Abdul Karim, but he also had fictitious names of Mohammad Karim and Qasim. He lived in a shantytown called Moosa Colony,” said provincial police chief Jahangir Mirza at a news conference, which was believed to have been held to highlight police achievements while President Gen Pervez Musharraf paid a visit to the city.

Mr Mirza showed a blurry video of the bandanna-wearing suicide bomber, with grenades strapped to his body, saying that he was about to embark on a sacred mission.

“After accomplishing my mission, I will go to Paradise,” says the gun-wielding suicide bomber.

The provincial police chief evaded questions about the suicide bomber’s sound bytes which did not suggest that he was going to assassinate Allama Hasan Turabi.

Insiders told Dawn that the militants had actually been arrested by an intelligence agency. They added that the militants had been grilled and handed over to the police with a cache of weapons recovered from them. But Mr Mirza was at pains to assert that, acting on a tip-off, the Anti-Violent Crime Cell had arrested the militants in Landhi’s Old Muzaffarabad Colony at around 5am. He added that the suspects – Mohammad Ameen alias Khalid Shaheen alias Abdullah, Sultan Mehmood alias Saifullah alias Muslim, and Mohammad Rehman alias Mani – had confessed to being behind the killing of Allama Hasan Turabi.

He said the attackers, involved in anti-state activities and sectarian terrorism, formed a breakaway faction of a proscribed jihadi outfit. He blamed the attackers for making the April 6 attempt on Allama Hasan Turabi’s life.