Preoccupied with his association with the Harkatul Ansar, M. Wajahat Khan dropped out of Intermediate studies. His lack of educational qualifications is compensated by a disturbing expertise in his chosen line of ‘work.’

Khan first went to Afghanistan in 1995. In those days Mustafa Masjid in Haroonabad (Shershah) was the main centre from which the Harkatul Ansar operated. From this mosque, Khan and his associates went to Sohrab Goth to board a bus to the Bannu and Miramshah offices of the Harkat, after which they went to the now infamous Khalid Bin Waleed camp in Khost. There, they underwent 40 days’ training. “The training pertained to the assembly and disassembly of pistols and AK-47 rifles, physical training and the use of Russian light machine guns as well as RPG-7 rockets,” he said.

Khan stated that the driving force behind his association with the Harkat was his desire to go to Kashmir, but he was unable to do this after he returned from Khost.

In 1997, he returned to the Khalid Bin Waleed camp and was trained in other areas, with the intention of infiltrating India. The two-and-a-half-month-long course concerned techniques of kidnapping and hijacking. The report of Khan’s interrogation suggests that this training was imparted by Yousaf Azhar, the brother-in-law of Maulana Masood Azhar, Commander Rashid Siddiqui and Ustad Abdul Hameed.

Upon his return to Karachi, one of Khan’s associates died in a blast in Korangi when he mishandled a grenade. After this death, Khan was sent to Afghanistan for a third time in order to allow him to keep a low profile and stay away from Pakistan.

Khan returned to Karachi once matters subsided and took admission in a diploma course at a Gulshan-i-Iqbal computer institute. He never finished this course, however, since he soon met Naveedul Hasan, who introduced his friend Zainul Abideen.

Deadly combination

Zainul Abideen told Wajahat Khan about the activities of the Freemasons’ Society in the city. This provided Khan a new front on which to employ the skills he had learnt in Afghanistan.

On information provided by Zainul Abideen, Khan and his accomplices killed Aven Adven on May 22, 2002, at his spare-parts shop near Tibet Centre. They used a lethal injection and “he died within five minutes,” Khan said. “We preferred to use this rather than a pistol since that would have made too much noise.”

Asked whether he had ever verified the information passed on by Zainul Abideen, Khan said that he had gathered information about the Freemasons’ Society through the internet and had also gone to Colombo to learn more about the society’s activities.

On June 20, 2002, Khan and his accomplices went to the office of the Taro International situated in the DHA, trussed up all people inside the office and killed its owner Malik Tariq Akhtar Allahwalla with a lethal injection. The late Tariq was a former office-bearer of the Rotary Club.

A similar fate was met by Aslam Martin, and a doctor at the Irtiqa Foundation at the hands of Khan’s band of murderers. The mastermind had only superficial information about the people at the foundation. He believed that “they were Communists, who do not believe in God,” and that was enough reason for him to go for the kill. Calm and composed despite being in police custody, Khan appears to have few second thoughts about his past or his blood-stained career. Talking about the 2002 Rimpa Plaza murders of seven (Christian) employees of the Adara-i-Aman-o-Insaf, he said that the NGO had been working against the blasphemy law, which he considered unacceptable.

“We chalked out a plan to eliminate Benazir Bhutto when she issued several statements in connection with Dr A.Q. Khan before her arrival in Pakistan,” Khan told the police. “After going through her statements, we assumed that she would be even more inclined towards the US than Musharraf was.” He told interrogators that after surveying the route to be taken by the PPP chairperson’s procession, the group decided that the Colony Gate flyover would be a suitable place to plant explosives. “But two of our associates were arrested while the survey was being carried out and we dropped the idea,” he said.

An interrogation officer told Dawn that Saquib Salman asked Khan to arrange the place where Daniel Pearl was kept prisoner, but that Salman did not disclose any of the rest of the plans or the identity of the kidnap victim.

Asked whether he subscribes to the suicide bombings in the country, Khan said that he and his accomplices were against it. And while he admitted that he had broken the law by killing, he did not appear particularly concerned about his fate. “Why did I surrender? How long could I have stayed on the run?” he mused. “I would have been arrested one day.”

Unholy duo

Along with Khan, the group’s financier Mohammed Hasan Amir also turned himself in. His case appears to belie the logic about education being the key to enlightenment.

After completing his matriculation from the Happy Home School, Amir went on to do a B.Com from the government Commerce College and took admission in ICMA. He completed a masters’ degree in computer science from London and then obtained a job and a permanent visa. However, he later returned to Karachi.

In 1992, he had participated in the Harkatul Ansar Conference and then went in 1994 to Khost’s Khalid Bin Waleed camp where he underwent 40 days’ training.

He met Naveedul Hasan because they both happened to live in the same Gulshan-i-Iqbal neighbourhood. Hasan used to give Amir tuitions, and introduced him to Wajahat Khan.

Having been inducted into the gang, Amir provided finances for the organisation, said investigators.

At this stage, not much is known about Mohammed Arshad, the third man who surrendered to the police. He has a graduate B.Com degree.

It is worthy of note that Naveedul Hasan, who introduced the main players in the gang – M. Wajahat Khan, M. Hasan Amir and Zainul Abideen – is the person who engineered the surrender of the mastermind and the financier, and was himself exonerated in the Jan 2002 case regarding an attempt on President Musharraf’s life.