Pakistan frees bin Laden bodyguard

 

Pakistan said to have freed bin Laden bodyguard

Pakistan recently freed a senior al-Qaida commander who was also an Osama bin Laden bodyguard, raising concerns about the country's commitment to tackling terrorism, media reports say.
Dr. Amin al Haq was freed several weeks ago because Pakistani officials could not prove his ties to al-Qaida and because he is not in good health, according to an Afghan Islamic Press report cited by other news organizations.
Haq reportedly was detained in Lahore by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency in December 2008, seven years after escaping with bin Laden, the Daily Telegraph of London reported. Haq served as the security coordinator of Osama bin Laden's Black Guard.
ISI passed Haq, 51, to police Peshawar in northwest Pakistan before his release, a security source told the Telegraph.
"Amin al-Haq had been arrested mistakenly, therefore, the police failed to prove any charge of his association with Osama bin Laden and the court set him free," he told The Daily Telegraph.
Haq, a doctor, was a member of the Hizb-i Islami Khalis (HIK), a key mujahadeen group that helped defeat the Soviets during the 1980s, according to Mother Jones magazine. HIK also helped bring bin Laden to Afghanistan after he was ejected from Sudan in 1996. And Haq himself reportedly accompanied bin Laden in his escape from Tora Bora in 2001.

Suicide bombing kills 34 in Pakistan

        34 people were killed in a suspected suicide bombing in the Pakistani city of Peshawar late Saturday, the latest attack since Osama bin Laden's killing last month.

       The bombing took place near a building that houses several newspaper offices as well as apartments. The attack occurred when a large number of people were dining in the nearby restaurants.

    

A small blast preceded a big one, which senior police official Banaras Khan said police suspected was carried out by a suicide bomber.

         "After the second blast, a fire broke out. Several charred bodies were lying on the ground while some wounded people were crawling away from the site," witness Naeem Ahmed told Reuters.

       Television footage showed twisted window frames, shards of broken glasses and fallen electricity cables strewn on roads as rescue workers were loading wounded men on stretchers into ambulances.

        Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of the northwestern Khyber Pukhtunkhuwa (KP) province, told reporters that doctors had said the death toll was 34, "but it may rise as many wounded people are in critical condition."

Peshawar is the capital of KP, which borders Afghanistan.

Hospital officials said 100 people were wounded, 21 of them seriously. Several journalists and policemen were among the wounded.

       "As I arrived here, one of the wounded man cried 'please take me to hospital, I am alive'," another witness told Express television at the site of the attack.

        Since bin Laden was killed, militants have attacked a heavily guarded naval base in Karachi; killed nearly 100 people in twin suicide bombings at the headquarters of a paramilitary force in the northwest.