By By Mazhar Tufail
“Aqeel Ali alias Dr Usman, who led a team of terrorists to reach the GHQ and was later captured in injured condition, is an extremely coward person and has revealed a lot about the terrorist network,” said the investigator, requesting anonymity. “He (Dr Usman) was the man who shot Brigadier Anwar and Lt-Col Wasim dead when they questioned his real intentions,” he revealed.
The investigator revealed Aqeel used to wear a suicide jacket but did not blow himself up and only instigated his accomplices to do so. He said when terrorists were holding the Army personnel hostage, Aqeel, who was in the Army kit, tried to pose as a dispenser and before the commando action even bandaged injured Army soldiers. He even told the same to the commandos.
“When commandos left the room, he hid behind a cupboard because he had already thrown his suicide vest away. When another bomber tried to pull the trigger, his jacket did not explode fully because a volley of bullets fired by a commando pierced his skull when he was pulling the trigger,” the investigator revealed.
The investigator said Aqeel had been accompanying terrorists in various incidents but used to escape from the scene. He quoted Army officers, who got freed through the commando action, as saying Aqeel first tried to slip away but when the men who had been held hostage by him recognised him, he was caught. He said the terrorists used Google Earth to locate their target and also got help from insiders.
“However, they miscalculated security arrangements and got killed while one of them (Aqeel) was captured alive,” he revealed. “Aqeel was also among those who had fired at the plane of former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf when it took off from Chaklala airport,” he disclosed.
The investigator said the terrorists had adopted the strategy of holding people hostage to get their demands met but after their attacks, including the one at the GHQ and three in Lahore, were foiled, they had now changed their modus operandi and were now resorting to target killing. In this regard, he cited the example of killing of a brigadier and Havildar in Sector G-11 of Islamabad on Thursday.