Pakistani police have arrested two members of an outlawed Sunni militant group suspected of plotting a series of attacks including one on parliament, a senior police official said on Thursday. Pakistan has netted more than two dozen other suspects, most belonging to local groups linked to al Qaeda, in the days before and after Liby's capture in the rugged North West Frontier Province on May 2. A new plot to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf, a leading U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, was also uncovered during the crackdown over the last couple of weeks, according to intelligence sources.The latest swoop took place in the central city of Multan. The two men arrested belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian militant group whose members were also implicated in assassination attempts said to have been planned by Liby on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. Sikandar Hayat, Multan's district police officer, told Reuters the pair were part of a network of up to 23 members who had been recruiting "suicide attackers" for assaults on the National Assembly and on the country's Shi'ite Muslim minority. He said police had arrested up to eight members of the network and a hunt was under way for the rest. "They had planned to make their way into the National Assembly and take the lawmakers hostage to press for their demands," Hayat said.
Police paraded the prisoners before journalists, and identified them as Amir Shehzad and Khawaja Ibrahim. Hayat said Shehzad had volunteered for a suicide mission, and five hand grenades were seized during the arrests. Shehzad spoke to Reuters on a mobile telephone given to him during the news conference: "I am arrested on charges of being Lashkar-e-Jhangvi member. My friends carried out attacks."