Pakistan arrests two members of Iran-linked militant group in Karachi
The Counter-Terrorism Department of the Sindh Police in Pakistan announced on Thursday that it had arrested two senior members of the Zainabiyoun Brigade in the city of Karachi.
The department stated that Weqar Abbas and Hussein Akbar are accused of killing 13 people and participating in targeted sectarian killings in Pakistan.
The head of the Sindh Police’s Counter-Terrorism Department reported that the Zainabiyoun Brigade had killed at least 17 people in Karachi between September 2023 and February 2024, initially believed to have been carried out by criminal groups.
He mentioned, “When the Department of Terrorist Crime Investigations examined these incidents, it became clear that in addition to street crimes, about 17 targeted sectarian killings occurred from September 2023 to February 2024… After further technical and criminal investigations of the network, it was revealed that terrorists from the banned Zainabiyoun organization were involved in these acts of terrorism.”
According to Al Arabiya Network, the Chief of Police in Sindh said, “The suspects were trained in Iran and targeted religious scholars and members of a religious community in Karachi under the orders of Iranian intelligence services, who opposed Zainabiyoun.”
Police in Sindh announced in January that they had arrested a “trained terrorist” affiliated with the Zainabiyoun Brigade in Karachi. He was accused of attempting to assassinate a senior Pakistani cleric.
Mufti Mohammad Taqi Usmani, a former Pakistan Supreme Court judge and member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, survived an assassination attempt in March 2019. The attack killed two of his guards and injured another scholar, Maulana Amir Shahabullah.
Pakistan has designated the Zainabiyoun Brigade as a “terrorist organization.”
This militant group is composed of Pakistani and Afghan Shiites residing in the country and was created by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to fight in the Syrian Civil War.
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