Plot to get Musharraf killed by suicide bomber unearthed

Lahore, Dec 18 (ANI): Pakistani authorities have unearthed a plot to kill former President Pervez Musharraf, and have claimed busting a clandestine terror network set up by jailed killer of Daniel Pearl inside the Hyderabad Jail.

The Sindh Government has suspended senior police and jail officials after a large number of cell phones, SIMs and other equipment were recovered, The News reported.

Highly placed Interior Ministry sources said that the jailed terrorist had also threatened Musharraf on his personal cell phone in the second week of November and planned to get him eliminated by a suicide bomber.

The caller reportedly told the former president: "I am after you, get ready to die."

Subsequent investigations by the authorities revealed someone made the threatening phone call from the Hyderabad Central Jail. Being a suspect, Sheikh Omar was placed under observation before it transpired that he was the one who had threatened the former strongman.

The authorities came to know that a plot had been hatched by Sheikh Omar to eliminate the then-president with the connivance of some Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militants, with whom he had long been in touch over the phone, the paper said.

As Omar's death cell was thoroughly searched, three mobile phones, six batteries, 18 SIMS of almost every cellular company and chargers were seized from his possession.

Further scanning of the alleged terror mastermind's telephone records revealed he had been making calls all over Pakistan to former Jihadi associates as well as relatives in Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.

Interestingly, however, his mobile phone records revealed besides having revived his contacts with the outer world, Omar had also been in touch with Attaur Rehman, alias Naeem Bukhari, a key Lashkar-e-Jhangvi operative arrested by the Karachi police on June 5, 2007 in connection with the Pearl murder case.

During the ensuing interrogations, Naeem Bukhari was learnt to have revealed that the LeJ operatives had already been directed by Sheikh Omar to target Musharraf either in Rawalpindi or in Karachi, preferably by using a suicide car bomber.

The LeJ militants had thus been monitoring Musharraf's movements to target him while travelling between his Army House residence in Rawalpindi and his Chak Shehzad farmhouse on the 1-A Park Road on the quiet suburbs of Islamabad or to blow up the bridge on Shara-e-Faisal during his next visit to Karachi.

It was after the unearthing of the assassination plot that Musharraf decided to leave for London on November 22 for a short trip - for the first time since his resignation as president in August 2008.

Although, he has already returned home, Musharraf is still occupying the Army House due to grave security concerns. (ANI)