KARACHI: Atta-ur-Rehman, alias Naeem Bukhari, one of the three high-valued targets whose arrest was announced by the director general of Inter-Services Public Relations at a news briefing here on Friday, spent around five years in custody before he got released from jail and wreaked havoc on major cities.

Sources said Rehman was first picked up by Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, in a Nazimabad locality in June 2002.

Besides the outlawed Lashkar-i-Jhangvi chief, the other two high-valued targets mentioned by the ISPR DG were Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) militant Farooq Bhatti, alias Musanna, and LJ’s Karachi chief, Sabir alias Munna Bablu.

Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials recalled that Rehman became the conduit between Arab militants of Al Qaeda and the local leadership of various sectarian and jihadi outfits following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that forced senior Al Qaeda leadership to escape the landlocked country.

A bomb-making expert, he gained prominence among the militant circles because unlike LJ’s Akram Lahori or Riaz Basra, he along with Asif Ramzi, another high-profile militant who was killed in 2003 in an accidental blast, always urged their colleagues to join Al Qaeda for what he regarded as a bigger cause rather than targeting only members of the Shia community. When Lahori was arrested in Karachi in mid 2002, he became the LJ chief but just a few days later he too was picked up by the Rangers.

Role in Daniel Pearl case

The officials said that Rehman had played a role in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, but he was never named in the FIR or charge-sheeted. His arrest came at a time when an antiterrorism court had completed the trial and was due to announce its verdict.

The arrest of Rehman was never acknowledged, because investigators and the prosecution team of the Pearl case believed that submission of a supplementary charge-sheet containing his name as an accused in court would ruin their case against the prime suspect, Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, commonly known as Shaikh Omar.

A few days after the unannounced arrest of Rehman, the Hyderabad ATC convicted Shaikh Omar and his three associates in the Pearl murder case. He remained under detention until June 2007 when the Kashmore police finally claimed to have arrested him along with another alleged militant, Faisal Bhatti, and seized illicit weapons from them.

According to official sources, Rehman got released from prison between late 2009 and early 2010 after being acquitted from the only charge against him — possession of illicit weapons (a charge that doesn’t fall within the ambit of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997).

After his release from jail, Rehman went to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) from where he reactivated his group in Karachi, made effective coordination with militant cells in Punjab and soon became the LJ’s operational chief. He allegedly masterminded, organised and took part in a string of attacks mainly on security forces in the country’s urban areas. He was said to be the architect of an alliance between the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, Al Qaeda and LJ-inspired militants and a key to bring them together under the umbrella of the AQIS — a new branch of Al Qaeda.

According to the police’ scounterterrorism department, Rehman had three aliases — Naeem Bukhari, Abu Haris and Mota — and was allegedly involved in two bomb blasts at Safoora Goth and outside Karachi University in December 2011 and a third bomb explosion outside the Defence residence of SP Chaudhry Aslam the same year. The official sources said Rehman was again arrested in late October 2015. Since his arrest in Karachi, he has been in the custody of an intelligence agency, according to the sources.

In December, the Sindh home department increased the bounty on Rehman’s head to Rs20 million. A reward of Rs15m was put on the arrest of AQIS militant Farooq Bhatti alias Musanna and Rs5m on LJ’s city chief Sabir alias Munna Bablu.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2016