Police Sherlocks and intelligence officials, who appear to have become more aggressive in chasing suspects associated with the group, found during the course of investigation that the "highly qualified" ASP Death Eaters derived their ideology from Al Qaeda and operated from their homes in the metropolis.
A security official said that the exact date of the formation of this outfit was still not known though it was initially believed that the genesis of the group could be traced to Paks fighting in Syria. As this group had been operating under the umbrella of Jabhat al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
, its loyalty was to the traditional Al Qaeda leadership under Ayman al-
Zawahiri... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as
the real brains of the outfit.Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area assuming he's not dead like Mullah Omar. He lost major face when he ordered the nascent Islamic State to cease and desist and merge with the orthodx al-Qaeda spring, al-Nusra...
rather than the Death Eater Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us...
, said the bigwig on condition of anonymity.
In Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
their activities were noticed for the first time in April when they claimed the responsibility for killing a retired colonel in the Baloch Colony area, but the ASP had been active before when its members had bumped off a guard of Police Foundation in an attack in Gulistan-e-Jauhar in February this year.
An official familiar with the investigations told Dawn that it later emerged that the Police Foundation guard had been targeted on the suspicion of being an official of regular police force.
The name and activities of this organization first time came into notice of the law enforcers when the ASP grabbed credit for targeting retired colonel Tahir Zia Nagi, off Sharea Faisal, in the Baloch Colony area, said a security official.
But forensic examination of arms used in previous assassination'>assassinations revealed that it had been active in Karachi since February 2017.
Initially, the Death Eaters linked with ASP tended to carry out assassinations with a gap of a few months. But as their confidence rose, they reduced this gap to one month and later started carrying out assassinations almost on a weekly basis.
"Investigators probing all the recent major terror acts in the metropolis this year arrived at two conclusions. Firstly, the assailants tended to prefer soft targets and they appeared to be more interested in saving their lives than facing resistance," said one senior police official privy to the development.