Title: New Theory Emerges in Karachi Blast
Author: Kamran Khan and Karl Vick
Publication: Washington Post
Date: June 23, 2002
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29830-2002Jun22.html

KARACHI, Pakistan, June 22 -- Investigators now believe the June 14 explosion outside the U.S. Consulate here was caused by a huge fertilizer bomb loaded aboard a pickup driven by a suicide bomber, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials close to the investigation.

FBI experts estimate the bomb weighed 500 pounds. It was so powerful that it reduced the pickup to pieces so small and scattered that they were initially taken for shards of another vehicle, a Toyota Corolla owned by a driving school. Investigators now believe that car, which carried five Pakistani women, was merely near the explosion, not the cause of it. All five women died, along with seven other Pakistani passersby and the driver of the pickup.

The previous theory, that a bomb was hidden in the Corolla without the occupants' knowledge, confounded investigators because it entailed the deliberate killing of unwitting Muslim women and a remote-control detonator. Investigators see the consulate bombing as the latest in a string of suicide attacks Islamic militants have launched against Western targets in Pakistan, with the apparent assistance of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

The breakthrough came after close examination of the bomb crater on Abdullah Haroon Road outside the consulate. The crater yielded engine parts that duplicated those recovered from the Corolla elsewhere.

"The explosion was so huge that it literally blasted the bomb-laden Suzuki pickup van into thousands of metal pieces," a senior Pakistani intelligence official said today.

The pickup also appeared on a videotape from a consulate security camera, according to a source close to the investigation. The camera was turned away from the explosion site, but it recorded the traffic approaching the site in the seconds before the blast, sources said.

Pakistani police and FBI specialists hovered over the scene in a helicopter to assess the full range of the blast, which sent bits of cars onto roofs at least a quarter-mile away. Pakistani security officials called the bombing the largest ever in Pakistan, and the first involving a fertilizer bomb. The officials noted that the car bomb that killed 14 people outside a Karachi hotel last month involved a commercial explosive, DNT.

"The most scary part of the current probe is the discovery that the terrorists here are now trained in making bombs from stuff like fertilizers, available in the open market," the Pakistani intelligence official said.

A combination of fertilizer and fuel oil was detonated in the rental truck that exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Campus radicals detonated a similar mixture outside the Army Math Research building at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1970.

Investigators suspect links between the consulate bombing and earlier attacks against Westerners in Pakistan, including the kidnapping and slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Pakistani sources said a suspected ringleader in the Pearl case, Naeem Bukhari, was arrested this week. Like other suspects already in custody, Bukhari, who traveled frequently to training camps in Afghanistan, has spoken of "Arabs" involved in the case -- referring to al Qaeda members.

"We have now identified each one of the Pakistani players involved in Danny's kidnapping and subsequent murder, but there are still no specific clues about the Arabs, who actually held their strings," said a senior Karachi police official. "Of the seven suspects arrested in recent days, there is not a single person who doesn't speak about the presence of Arab al Qaeda in Karachi."

Police are still looking for other suspects in the Pearl case, including Saud Memon, a Karachi businessman police have identified as the owner of the compound where Pearl's remains were unearthed. The property's owner initially was identified as the Al-Rashid Trust, an Islamic charity the U.S. government has linked to al Qaeda.

In another development, Pakistani authorities have arrested "senior" members of al Qaeda in Karachi, including a man identified as "Riyad," according to a senior Pakistani intelligence official.

"Riyad's arrest was the most significant catch since Abu Zubaida's arrest in Faisalabad," the official said, referring to the joint FBI-Pakistani raid that captured the most senior aide to bin Laden since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Riyad and a second suspect were captured in a Pakistani police raid in Kharadar, a densely populated section of downtown Karachi. Two other al Qaeda suspects were taken into custody at the Karachi airport, the officials said. They said all four Arabs have been handed over to U.S. investigators.

The intelligence official said the Americans found two of the arrests so significant that President Bush sent "personal messages of appreciation" to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

"We have absolutely no doubts that the government wants to flush out al Qaeda from every inch of Pakistan," the intelligence official said. "With considerable religious support for such people in Pakistan, it is no small task."

Vick reported from Islamabad, Pakistan.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company