Pakistan claims arrests of 3 alleged terrorists trained in India

Jan 29, 2009, 12:48 GMT

   Islamabad - A senior Pakistani police officer on Thursday announced the arrest of three people he said were 'trained and pampered' by the Indian intelligence agency for carrying out terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

   The Pakistani nationals had planned to target government buildings and important personalities, including religious figures, city police chief Pervez Rathore told reporters in Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab.

   Rathore said the three suspects were detained close to the Pakistan-India border, which, he said, they crossed several times to receive training in bomb making from India's Research and Analysis Wing spy agency.

   'They (Indian agents) were encouraging them, they were training them and they paid them in millions,' he said.

   During preliminary interrogations, the detainees confessed that they detonated a dust-bin bomb in 2006 in Lahore, killing two bystanders and injuring 16, the police officer said.

   The allegations came as tensions simmered between Indian and Pakistan in the aftermath of the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people.

   India blamed the Pakistan-based Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist organization for the carnage. Although Islamabad admitted that the only alleged Mumbai attacker to be arrested is a Pakistani national, it categorically denied patronizing the four-day siege.

   Rathore said Thursday that the three arrested men were involved in reconnaissance of Pakistani landmarks for the Indian spy agency and they had also recently been focusing on LeT offices.