A US-based female member of the London faction of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) is planning assassinations on religious leaders to trigger sectarian violence in Pakistan, authorities said on Thursday.
In a press conference in Karachi, Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Omar Shahid Hamid and a Rangers official played a video showing a woman giving instructions to an unidentified hitman and promising payment on successful completion of the killing.
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The woman, identified as one Kehkashan Haider, has been residing in Texas since the 1990s and is a close aide of London-based MQM founder Altaf Hussain, the officials said.
An audio recording of a telephonic conversation between Haider and a hitman was also played during the press conference wherein she tells the individual to “send his love” to the target and demanded confirmation of the attempt, adding “our life depends on it.”
In a separate video, she further provided details of the payments to be made to the killer and arrangements for his security and transport while adding that he would be flown abroad after the successful assassination.
Revealing Haider’s background, DIG Hamid said that she is a member of the party’s London faction (which is still loyal to Hussain) and has established target killer groups in collaboration with India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and domestic ethnic-turned-terrorist groups, including Baloch separatist groups, to target law enforcement agencies, police and political and religious leaders in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi.
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He revealed that an intelligence-based operation (IBO) began in 2017 when the Sindh Rangers arrested a team of target killers with links to MQM-L. The details of the plot were uncovered jointly by the CTD and the Pakistan Rangers during the interrogation of recently arrested alleged hitmen from Karachi and other parts of Sindh.
The information collected during the course of interrogations revealed that assassination teams had been re-established under the directions of the MQM-L chief Hussain, DIG Hamid said.
“These new targeted killing teams were being patronised by Kehkashan Haider,” he added.
On the occasion, the Rangers official, Col Shabbir, said that the murder of the target identified by Haider possessed the potential to cause sectarian rifts.
“We wanted to bring it to your [media’s] notice how these people are attempting to spread chaos in the country from abroad,” he said.
The CTD has registered a case against Haider under Sections 11-H and 11-N of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 pertaining to terror financing, DIG Hamid said.
He observed it was “alarming” that a woman based in the United States was coordinating such illicit activities in Karachi “like a mafia don”.
He announced the Foreign Ministry will “take up this matter with the law enforcement institutions of the US government”.
“A clear line of financial transactions is appearing when we traced bank accounts and transactions,” he said, adding that the evidence of financial transactions for terror financing made Islamabad’s case stronger.
“If there is any aspect of money laundering in this, [then] it will be investigated according to the Anti-Money Laundering Act and looked at by the FIA [Federal Investigation Agency].”
