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Three men held over killing 7 Pakistani Christians in 2002

Pakistani police have arrested three Islamic militants in connection with murder of seven Christians belonging to Idara Amn-o-Insafa (or Organisation for Justice and Peace, a charity jointly run by Catholics and Protestants) in 2002, reports Sheraz Khurram Khan, special correspondent for ASSIST News Service in Pakistan .

The suspects are said to have confessed but Karachi police have not yet confirmed the news, Asia News has reported.

“We were trying to catch them since we arrested ten members of this organisation earlier,” Asia News quoted the Senior Superintendent of Police Raja Umer Khattab as saying.

All three belong to Tehreek-e-Islami Lashkar-e-Mohammadi, “a very dangerous group, but their leader is still at large,” it said.

The story said that at the time of the murder of the Christian men the local press and some public security officials had said that they had been caused by in-fighting in the local Christian community over real estate.

“We told the police immediately after the sad incident that some militant group had done this,” the story quoted Fr Bonnie Mendes, director of the Human Development Centre as saying.

Mendes, the story said, was present at the slain Christians’ funeral. “It is good that these extremists were captured. Now the government has to be very strict with such elements because now they know the root causes and the people behind all this. This is the time to get the maximum information from them,” Mendes told Asia News.

According to the story Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the Catholic Church’s National Commission for Justice and Peace, said that the victims’ families were not properly compensated for their loss.

And as a result of the murders, the sense of insecurity that followed and the lack of government protection Idara Amn-o-Insafa ceased operations, it said.

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[02/29/2008]

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