Pamphlets were found on June 28, 2017, from the spot in Karachi where four cops had been gunned down at iftar time, warning of a terrorist-led operation ‘Radul Artedad’ against security forces.
The Ansar al Sharia Pakistan militant group claimed responsibility for the killings through the pamphlets.
According to the message, the attack was carried out in agony over the release of the bloggers accused of blasphemy, government ‘indifference’ towards Dr Afia Siddiqui, ‘fake’ arrests and encounters involving militants, and continued diplomatic and military ties with Iran and Russia.
According to the Counter-Terrorism Department, the newly-formed group has its roots in Libya. It was also operating in other countries of the Middle East while the US and the UK had already banned it. It has been formed the way the al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) was formed, by merging different splinter militants groups.
Who is Aafia Siddiqui?
Aafia Siddiqui (born 2 March 1972) is an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist, who in 2010 was convicted of seven counts of attempted murder and assault of US personnel and is serving her 86-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.
Known as the "Daughter of the Nation" in Pakistan, her arrest and conviction was seen there as an "attack on Islam and Muslims", and occasioned large protests throughout the country. In the US she was sometimes called "Lady al-Qaeda", the only woman the FBI had named as wanted in the "war on terror", and considered by some to be especially dangerous as "one of the few alleged Al Qaeda associates with the ability to move about the United States undetected, and the scientific expertise to carry out a sophisticated attack".