It started with a robbery, but the gang that burst into a branch of Al-Habib Bank in this teeming port city had no interest in striking it rich, and the university graduate driving the getaway car was just getting started on a master plan for terror. The heist, carried out in daylight and with AK-47 assault rifles, is emblematic of a new brand of Islamic militant — more educated but less established and largely cut off from traditional sources of terror funding, Pakistani police and intelligence officials told The Associated Press. Atta-ur Rehman and his Jundullah gang walked away from the bank in Karachi on Nov. 18 with just under $70,000, enough to finance an eight-month wave of attacks against the U.S. Consulate, a Christian Bible studies group, a peace concert by an Indian singer, a police station, and a senior Pakistani military general.
There's no indication al-Qaida had a hand in Jundullah's spree, but some gang members are believed to have spent time at training camps with top members of Osama bin Laden's network. "Normally, when robbers loot a bank they split the cash and go their separate ways, but the Jundullah gang only spent about 500,000 rupees ($8,600) from their heist and they stuck together," said Fayyaz Leghari, chief of operations for the Karachi police. "They were not ordinary robbers. They saw the bank job as a way to fund their holy mission."
Leghari said police recovered the rest of the money when they arrested 10 members of the gang following a June 10 assassination attempt on Ahsan Saleem Hayat, the city's military commander and a close aide to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Hayat survived but 11 others were killed. The group, whose name means Allah's Brigade, was apparently saving the cash to finance more attacks. |