Police in Pakistan’s Punjab province have smashed the alleged technical hub of Al-Qaeda and arrested 13 people, including seven women.

Islamabad, Aug 21/Nationalturk – In a major blow to militant activities in country, police in Pakistan’s Punjab province smashed the alleged technical hub of Al-Qaeda and arrested 13 people, including seven women.

Officials said intelligence agency sleuths alongwith the men and officers of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and Lahore Elite Police (LEP) raided a house in the Green Town area in Lahore in Punjab province yesterday.

They said during the raid, security men smashed the alleged technical hub being operated by Al Qaeda in one of the houses in the area. “At least 13 suspected people including seven women were arrested during the raid. Six other suspects managed to escape and manhunt has been launched to track them down”.

They said the security men during the raid also found weapons and explosives in the house.

‘Tech hub was named International Technical Hub’

Security officials said the name of the exchange was ‘International Technical Hub’ which usually showed identities and signals from Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan.

An international gateway exchange is a telephone switch that forms the gateway between a national telephone network and one or more other international gateway exchanges, thus providing cross-border connectivity.

Police sources said the office was being used to trace phone numbers of influential people to make calls for extortion and kidnappings for ransom in different parts of the country.

They said the accused had established a huge organised set-up, housing a big exchange which used to show telephone codes of foreign countries to the call receiver so no one could trace that the call was being made from Lahore. “No one could guess the calls were being made from Lahore”.

‘Ransom calls were made from the exchange’

They said ransom calls regarding Ali Musa Gilani (former PM Syed Raza Gilani’s son)  and Shahbaz Taseer, kidnapped son of the late governor of Punjab province Salmaan Taseer were also traced from this exchange. “The exchange might have been used for telephonic conversations in connection with the kidnapping of US national Dr Warren Weinstein and some other important personalities. The investigations in this regard are going on”.

Officials said they managed to trace a phone call from the exchange on Monday and subsequently conducted the raid.  “More raids were conducted last evening and further investigations are going on. More arrests are likely to take place,” they said.

Pakistan newspaper the Dawn quoted local people in the locality as saying that the raided property belonged to one Ajmal Shah, who had left for US few days back.

“Ajmal, who had been living in the locality for over 15 years, had rented out some portions of his property. The security men searched five to seven houses in the area,” they said.

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Faiz Ahmad / NationalTurk Pakistan News

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