ISLAMABAD: The top police official in Pakistan’s federal capital announced on Friday the country’s intelligence and law enforcement officials had managed to track down and arrest two militants who shot a video clip threatening to target the country’s parliament building before circulating it on social media.
The video was recorded from the nearby Margalla Hills and zoomed in on the parliament building. Later, it focusing on a piece of paper that named a proscribed militant network, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and said: “We are coming.”
Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks after the TTP unilaterally called off a fragile cease-fire with the government last November and announced to resume extremist activities across the country.
The video clip was shared in the same context by social media users, many of whom found it alarming.
“A video was circulating on social media by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan about the Parliament House of the country in which the group said they had reached there,” Inspector General of Islamabad Police Dr. Akbar Nisar Khan informed a group of journalists while addressing a news conference with the interior minister. “All intelligence agencies, including IB [Intelligence Bureau] and ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence], along with the police in Rawalpindi and Islamabad collectively took action and arrested the people involved in it.”
Khan said there were two militants – one from Swabi and another from Peshawar – who were involved in the criminal activity.
He added that both of them were currently being investigated under the country’s Anti-Terrorism Act.
The top police official maintained the video was shot primarily to terrorize people and did not say much about the capacity of the militant network.
He also informed that police were working with the Federal Investigation Agency to deprive radical outfits of the digital space as well.