Pakistan arrests prominent al-Qaida financier
Police offices stand next to suspects who allegedly killed Sikh lawmaker Sardar Suran Singh during a press conference in Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, April 25, 2016. Pakistani police have arrested six people allegedly involved in the killing of a Sikh lawmaker who was a provincial adviser on minority affairs.
MOHAMMAD SAJJAD/AP
ISLAMABAD — Pakistani authorities have arrested an al-Qaida financier who has been on a U.N. sanctions list since 2012.
Police said Monday that Abdur Rehman Sindhi was detained during a raid by intelligence agencies in the southern port city of Karachi last week.
Police officer Muqaddas Haider says a joint team of police and intelligence agents is questioning the suspect on what role he might have played in militant attacks in Pakistan in recent years.
Much of al-Qaida's senior leadership fled to Pakistan following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistani police said Monday that a Sikh lawmaker gunned down last week was killed by a political rival from the minority community, who was arrested along with five other suspects.
The Pakistani Taliban had claimed responsibility for the killing of Sardar Suran Singh, who was gunned down while heading home on Friday night in northwestern Pakistan. Singh had served as a provincial adviser for minority affairs.
But police said the killing was ordered by Baldev Kumar, a rival Sikh politician, who paid hired assassins around $10,000 to carry out the shooting.
Azad Khan, police chief in the district where the killing took place, announced the arrests on Monday and paraded the suspects, including Kumar, before reporters, who were not allowed to interview the detainees.
The Taliban and other extremist groups have targeted Sikhs and other religious minorities in the past.
Elsewhere in Pakistan on Monday, gunmen shot and killed a female doctor and her husband, a retired air force officer, in the northwestern city of Peshawar, said police official Zeb Khan. Their seven-year-old son survived, he said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
