Five ISIS terrorists arrested from mosque for distributing hate material among people: Officials

PTI, Apr 6, 2021, 4:04 PM IST

Lahore: Five terrorists belonging to the banned Islamic State outfit were arrested from a mosque in Pakistan’s Punjab province where they were distributing hate material among people and collecting funds from them, officials said on Tuesday.

The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab Police said that it received credible information that the members of ‘Daesh’ (the ISIS) were present near Bhatta Chowk in Lahore’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA).

“The CTD raided a place in Bhatta Chowk and arrested five terrorists belonging to Daesh (ISIS),” the CTD said in a statement.

These terrorists – identified as Nazif Ullah, Zia ur Rehman, Muhammad Ishtiaq, Abdul Rehman Butt, and Malik Kashif – were distributing hate material among people and collecting funds for their organization, the statement said.

According to the FIR, the suspected terrorists were nabbed from a mosque at Bhatta Chowk.

The terrorists were distributing hate material among the public when they were apprehended, a CTD spokesman said.

The anti-terror body said that 40 banned books, funds and two receipts of Daesh have been recovered from their custody.

One of the alleged terrorists was carrying a receipt book with a printed Daesh monogram and hate material. The CTD team recovered 12,000 Pakistani rupees from another suspect and 15 copies of a book on Osama bin Laden, the statement added.

“Investigation has been filed at police station CTD Lahore and the suspects are being interrogated,” it added.

The Pakistani government denies the presence of ISIS on its soil but often its security agencies have nabbed terrorists of the banned outfit from different parts of the country, mostly in Punjab every now and then.