Pakistan foils coup plot

[bemildred]

It's Friday the 13th, by the way ...

KARACHI - A plot to stage a coup against Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf soon after his recent return from the US has been uncovered, resulting in the arrest of more than 40 people.

Most of those arrested are middle-ranking Pakistani Air Force officers, while civilian arrests include a son of a serving brigadier in the army. All of those arrested are Islamists, contacts in Rawalpindi, where the military is based, divulged to Asia Times Online.

The conspiracy was discovered through the naivety of an air force officer who this month used a cell phone to activate a high-tech rocket aimed at the president's residence in Rawalpindi. The rocket was recovered, and its activating mechanism revealed the officer's telephone number. His arrest led to the other arrests.

Other rockets were then recovered from various high security zones, including the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad.

Asia Times Online

[Kagemusha]

1. Geez, you do it while the guy is gone, not when he gets back.

See: Thai, Prime Minister

[acmavm]

2. These guys were pretty inept. I keep saying though that Mushy

is going to have to become a US citizen sooner or later. His days are soooooo numbered.

[David__77]

3. Too bad.

A coup would be a good thing. Bring back Benazir Bhutto at least...

[ButterflyBlood]

4. I wouldn't say that

I'm willing to bet the coupsters would be even worse than Musharraf. We don't need Pakistan under an Iran-type government.

[hogwyld]

6. Yeah, with our luck, it would be another Taliban state

With Nukular weapons. (misspelling intended)

[Bhaisahab]

5. According to this journalist - its MIHOP by Mush himself

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061023&fname=Musharaff+%28F%29&sid=1

Commando Comics
Who are these assassins after Musharraf's life? Is it all a ploy?
AMIR MIR

Hyper-reality seems to be dogging Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf nowadays. Otherwise, how do you explain these 'deadly' statistics: in the first week of October, there were three reported attempts made on his life, bringing the grand total of assassination bids on him to nine, from the time he grabbed power through a coup in 1999. But it seems that Musharraf, like the proverbial cat, enjoys nine lives—he's survived without sustaining even a minor wound. Now, like his innumerable critics here, you could smell mischief in this incredible coincidence and ask: are these assassination attempts engineered?

But first, the attempts on Musharraf's life last week.

On the night of October 5, a powerful explosion rocked the Ayub National Park, Rawalpindi, a stone's throw from the Army House where the president lives. Twelve hours later, in the early hours of Oct 6, two 107 mm live rockets were recovered a kilometre from the President's House, his office. On October 7, securitymen recovered two more rockets, fitted


with launchers and plugged to mobile phones, from a green belt along the Kashmir Highway, close to the headquarters of the Inter Services Intelligence. This is the highway the president takes daily to commute between his residence in Rawalpindi and office in Islamabad. Obviously, officials summarised, the rockets were positioned there to target the president's cavalcade and/or the ISI office.

Partly, last week's reported attempts on Musharraf's life test credulity because these weren't anywhere as serious as the bids on his life in late 2003, says Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Munawar Hassan.

He explains, "In December '03, Musharraf's convoy was targeted twice by suicide bombers as his cavalcade crossed the bridge leading to Army House." Hassan says assassins are dogged in their approach, risking their lives to get close to their target to kill him. But the blast at Ayub Park wasn't anywhere in lethal proximity to Army House.

Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan points out other loopholes. For one, he says there's no explanation as to why live rockets fitted with launchers weren't or couldn't be fired. Second, Imran points out that initially Islamabad police chief Chaudhry Iftikhar described the October 7 recovery of rockets as "a successfully concluded mock exercise with two dud rockets hidden by the authorities to test the preparedness of their multi-disciplinary force". By the same evening, recalls Imran, Islamabad SSP Sikandar Hayat issued a statement saying that Iftikhar's statement had been a result of a misunderstanding—and that the rockets were the purported weapons in an attempted act of terrorism.

Following these alleged assassination attempts, the security agencies arrested 200 labourers from the construction site of the Pakistan National Council of Arts. On October 10, the Islamabad police chief claimed to have arrested a college student from Rawalpindi on suspicion of Al Qaeda links and involvement in placing the rocket launchers in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Imran refuses to believe that a college student could get hold of Russian-made rocket launchers, then smuggle it into Rawalpindi and Islamabad and fix them at sensitive spots in the high-security zones there. The cricket legend says Musharraf has failed to suppress the Taliban insurgency and deliver Osama bin Laden to the US. "These assassination attempts have been engineered by Musharraf to absolve himself of the blame for the failure to help America realise its goals," Khan told Outlook.

CONTINUED AT LINK ABOVE