Pakistan Suicide Plot Uncovered
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Security forces were hunting for more terror suspects yesterday as Pakistan disclosed that it has arrested a dozen Al Qaeda operatives who had planned to launch simultaneous suicide attacks on government leaders and the American Embassy.
Officials said the plot could have killed hundreds of people, underscoring the deadly stakes in President Musharraf’s aggressive push to defeat violent extremists enraged by his support of the American-led war on terrorism.
“We have infiltrated their network and that is why we have made these arrests,” said Pakistan’s interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayyat. “They wanted to destabilize Pakistan, they wanted to create unrest and they wanted to weaken this government.”
Meanwhile, in Honduras yesterday, officials there tightened security at foreign embassies and declared a national terror alert after receiving information that Al Qaeda was trying to recruit Hondurans to attack embassies of America, Britain, Spain, and El Salvador, a government official said yesterday.
The heightened security was implemented three days ago after Honduras’ intelligence services received reports of a plan allegedly targeting those countries’ embassies in Tegucigalpa and abroad, said Honduras’s security minister, Oscar Alvarez .
“We are facing a state of preventative national alert, because our intelligence services report that Al Qaeda foreigners have made offers for Hondurans to carry out sabotage both here and abroad,” Mr. Alvarez said at a news conference.
In Pakistan, government officials announced previously that they had cracked a plot at home to sabotage Independence Day celebrations on August 14, but details were not revealed until this weekend.
Officials said 11 or 12 people, mostly Pakistanis, were arrested in the cities of Islamabad, Hyderabad, and Lahore between August 10 and August 15. Mr. Hayyat said they were linked to Al Qaeda and wanted to kill “important personalities” including Mr. Musharraf and government ministers.
Security agencies seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition, including dozens of bombs, grenades, rocket launchers, detonators, and electronic surveillance devices. They also found belts used to strap explosives to a suicide attacker’s body.
Mr. Musharraf, who ended Pakistan’s support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, narrowly escaped two bombings just 10 days apart in December 2003 that left 17 people dead.
He has since stepped up the fight against terrorists, and over the past five weeks Pakistan says it has captured more than 60 suspects, including some key Al Qaeda operatives.
Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed told reporters yesterday that authorities were hunting for four more suspects, including one man who had brought weapons for use in the attack from Afghanistan.
Mr. Hayyat implicated Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the head of a religious school in Islamabad, in the plot, saying his car was used to transport weapons to a house in an upscale neighborhood of Rawalpindi that would have been the base for the attack.
Mr. Ghazi remains at large, and supporters, who say he is innocent, have staged street demonstrations to protest raids on seminaries seeking his arrest.
The purported Al Qaeda plot in Honduras was directly linked to the war in Iraq, which is why it targeted America, Britain, and El Salvador, Mr. Alvarez said.
However, it was unclear why Spain was targeted since Madrid pulled its troops out of Iraq earlier this year.
Honduras withdrew its 370 soldiers in April.
“We are trying to avoid any problems,” Mr. Alvarez said. “Starting three days ago, we have redoubled security measures at the embassies of those nations involved in Iraq. This situation will continue for the foreseeable future.”
In July, Mr. Alvarez said a Saudi-born terror suspect sought by American officials was spotted earlier this year at an Internet cafe in the Honduran capital before fleeing the country.
The man, Adnan El Shukrijumah, once lived in South Florida and is the subject of an FBI alert issued in 2003. The agency has asked law enforcement agencies and the public to be on the lookout for Mr. Shukrijumah on the grounds that he may be plotting terrorist attacks against America or its interests abroad.