Investigators said banned
organisation Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan (SMP) was the prime
suspect in the Multan bombing on Thursday. A major crackdown
was launched against SMP activists throughout Punjab and
eight were arrested in Multan and its adjoining areas,
official sources told .
“The government formed
20 teams of officers from intelligence and security agencies
for a crackdown in various parts of the province,”
sources said. “Among militant Shia organisations,
only SMP had the capability to carry out such an attack,”
sources said, “but the SMP has been quite inactive
since the arrest of its chief, Ghulam Raza Naqvi. Many
of its frontline activists have fled the country.”
The bombing of the Lahore
Sessions Court in 1997, in which Sipah-e-Sahaba leader
Maulana Ziaur Rehman Farooqi died, showed that SMP had
the capability to use remotely triggered explosive devices.
Though the man who executed that bombing, Muharram Ali,
was hanged to death, the mastermind Dr Qaiser Abbas is
still at large. Dr Qaiser is an explosives specialist.
He fled Pakistan after the incident.
“If the SMP is behind
the incident, it means Dr Qaiser is back in Pakistan because
he is the only SMP man who can make such devices,”
said a security official. He said security agencies were
surprised by the SMP’s re-emergence. “We though
the SMP had collapsed after the murder of its supreme
leader Murid Abbas Yazdani and the arrest of Naqvi.”
The rest of SMP’s
prominent leaders and activists fled the country. Maulana
Zulqarnain with a Rs 1 million bounty on his head escaped
to a neighbouring country in 1999. Rizwan Haider, with
Rs 500,000 on his head, is also settled abroad. Muhammad
Ali, Naqvi’s right hand man, was arrested with him.
He broke jail and escaped, but was recaptured.
“The main question
is who is leading SMP and how has it reorganised itself?”
security officials said.
