International Terrorism linked to Pakistan

Tarek Fatah

The Huffington Post

1. September 1986: Armed men attempt to hijack a Pan Am jet on the tarmac of Karachi airport in which 20 people died. Among the arrested were five Palestinians belonging to the Abu Nidal group and seven Pakistanis.
2. January 1993: The CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia is attacked, killing two CIA employees and wounding three others. The perpetrator is a Pakistani, Ajmal Kansi. Four years later in 1997 he is captured by FBI agents in rendered back to the United States to stand trial and was executed by lethal injection in 2002.
3. February 1993: The World Trade Centre is attacked using a truck bomb. The mastermind of the attack, Ramzi Yousef is later arrested in 1995 in Islamabad, Pakistan.
4. August 1998: American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed, killing 223 people and wounding over 4,000 others. One of the planners of this terror attack,Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is arrested in 2004 in Gujrat, Pakistan.
5. October 2000: Jihadi terrorists carry out a suicide attack on the United States Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Cole while it is harboured and being refuelled in the Yemen port of Aden. Seventeen American sailors are killed, and 39 injured. The Saudi mastermind behind this attack, Walid Bin Attash is later captured on April 29, 2003 in Karachi, Pakistan.
6. May 2002: A suicide bomber kills 11 French naval engineers outside The Sheraton Hotel in Karachi, Pakistan. Three years later the bomb maker, Mufti Muhammad Sabir is arrested 2005 in Karachi, Pakistan.
7. October 2002: Jihadi terrorists attack the Indonesian tourist resort of Bali killing 202 people and injuring another 240. Nine years later, the chief suspect in the bombing, Umar Patek of the militant group Jemaah Islamiah is arrested in 2011 in Abbotabad, Pakistan.
8. July 2005: Jihadi terrorists carry out the now infamous 7/7 suicide bombings in London, UK, killing 52 people and injuring 700 others. Three of the four suicide bombers are of Pakistani ancestry. In January 2009, one of the planners of the London 7/7 bombings, Saudi national Zabi uk-Taifi is arrested in a village just outside Peshawar, Pakistan.
9. December 2008: Pakistani jihadi terrorists carry out a sea-borne suicide attack on Mumbai, India, killing 166 people including a rabbi and his pregnant wife at a Jewish Centre, and injuring 308 others. The mastermind of the Mumbai attack was the Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley (born Daud Sayed Gilani). His alleged Pakistani-Canadian accomplice, Muhammad Tahwwar Rana, was acquitted in the Mumbai attacks but convicted of working for the terror group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), long suspected of being supported by Pakistan's ISI.
10. May 2010: A bombing at New York Times Square is foiled when street vendors discover smoke coming from a vehicle and alert an NYPD patrolman. The bomb had ignited, but failed to explode, and was disarmed before it caused any casualties. Two days later federal agents arrest a man at John F. Kennedy International Airport after he tries to board an Emirate Airlines flight to Dubai. He is Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American.

In addition to the above list of international jihadi terror attacks associated with Pakistan, the country has been home to most of the Al-Qaeda leadership, including Osama Bin Laden. They include the following five:

• Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen currently held in U.S. custody, was arrested in March 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
• Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni citizen being held by the United States as an enemy combatant detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He was captured in September 2002, in Karachi, Pakistan.
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is currently in U.S. military custody in Guantánamo Bay for acts of terrorism, including mass murder of civilians, as he has been identified as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks". He was captured in March 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
• Abu Faraj al-Libbi is the nom de guerre of a Libyan who is a senior member of al-Qaeda. [His real name is thought to be Mustafa al-'Uzayti.] Al-Labibi was arrested in May 2005 in Mardan, Pakistan.
• Mustafa Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri is a Syrian-born leader of al-Qaeda who holds Spanish citizenship. He is wanted in Spain for the 1985 El Descanso bombing that killed 18 people, and in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Nasar too ended up in Pakistan where he was captured in October 2005 in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
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