Pakistan arrests Sri Lanka cricket attack suspect: AFP

LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) — Pakistani police said Wednesday they had arrested one of seven men accused of plotting the deadly attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the eastern city of Lahore in March.

Six policemen and two civilians were killed and seven Sri Lankan squad members were injured when militants launched a gun and grenade attack on the team as they travelled to a match on March 3.

"We have identified seven men accused of planning the attack and one of them has been arrested," Lahore police chief Pervez Rathor told reporters.

Rathor identified the suspect as Zubair, also known by his alias Nek Mohammad, who appeared at the televised press conference in Pakistan's cultural hub Lahore with his face completely covered in a black mask.

"We came to Lahore two days before the attack," Zubair shouted through his mask, adding that they had lodged in a small house on the outskirts of Lahore.

All the seven accused belong to a previously unknown group named as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Punjab network, the police chief said, adding that the mastermind was a man named Farooq, who remained at large.

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Imran Khan sees 'foreign element' in cricket attack: AFP

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Former Pakistan captain Imran Khan believes a "foreign element" could be involved in this week's attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, according to an interview published Saturday.

"It could be India, Afghanistan, the Tamil Tigers," Khan was quoted as saying in an interview published online by The Times of London.

"The motive is to damage the state of Pakistan and end cricket here. The shocking thing is that there was so little security for the players," Khan said.

Khan said that he now feared that Pakistan would be treated as a pariah by the rest of the world and that it was already being described as a "failed state" and a breeding ground for terrorists.

"This attack was guaranteed front-page news everywhere in the world," Khan said.

"The perpetrators wanted to portray Pakistan as a chaotic state in the Dark Ages. Yesterday, the stock market took a nosedive. Pakistan is a resilient country but we have gone from crisis to crisis."

Khan's belief that foreigners may be involved in the cricket attack echoes Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik, who told reporters Friday that, "I cannot rule out (involvement of a) foreign hand in the incident."

Khan said that almost all the terrorism taking place in Pakistan since 2004, when its army was sent into the tribal areas, had been suicide attacks.

He said that last year there were over 100 suicide attacks "but they have a pattern. They are always in retaliation."

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Umps urged to cool criticism of Pakistani forces: The Age

INTERNATIONAL Cricket Council boss Haroon Lorgat claims Australian umpires Simon Taufel and Steve Davis need time "to be more rational" about the Lahore terrorist attack.

Taufel, Davis and English match referee Chris Broad have all been scathing of the Pakistani security forces after feeling they were left for dead in last Tuesday's ambush by heavily armed gunmen.

They felt deserted by the security escort as they lay stranded on the floor of their van with their driver shot dead and a colleague wounded as the Sri Lankan team bus ahead in their convoy drove away.

But ICC chief executive Lorgat, their boss, said they needed time to calm down and consider what had happened.

"I am mindful of the experience they have gone through and I think it is a difficult time for them," Lorgat said at a press conference in Sydney yesterday.

"I guess if you or I had gone through something we might have reacted in a similar fashion. We must just allow them to settle down and be more rational in their assessment of what has transpired."

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ICC chief defends security in Lahore: The Australian

INTERNATIONAL Cricket Council chief executive Haroon Lorgat was satisfied with the security plan for the umpires and match officials who escaped being killed during a terrorist attack in Lahore last Tuesday.

Match referee Chris Broad claimed they were "sitting ducks" during the attack and his anger was matched by Australian umpires Steve Davis and Simon Taufel, who claimed "we were promised nine (out of 10 security) and got two out of 10".

"We were satisfied with the plan," Lorgat told The Australian yesterday. "I'm waiting for reports from that incident which will either substantiate what Chris Broad is saying or perhaps give us a different view on what has transpired.

"Initially, we had interchanged with the Pakistan Cricket Board on that plan. We shared it with the match officials.

"They had provided some input into it and we had signed off on the plan."

Six policemen and the match officials' bus driver were killed while five Sri Lankan players, an assistant coach and a reserve umpire were injured when a dozen heavily armed gunmen hijacked the convoy on its way to Gaddafi stadium.

Lorgat was speaking at picturesque North Sydney Oval yesterday while watching the women's World Cup match between Australia and New Zealand, which was a world away from the rising tide of terrorism across the subcontinent.

Before the match, he stood on the field with both teams and the match officials for a minute's silence to acknowledge those who suffered in the attack.

Lorgat is waiting on a report from the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit about the incident, which will be discussed at the ICC's next board meeting on April 16.

Broad may be invited to the meeting to give his account of the issue, along with security experts.

Not surprisingly, the ICC will review its security measures for match officials in future.

"It's certainly something we're going to have to look at very carefully," Lorgat said. "It might even include ensuring we've got close protection officers with match officials in certain if not all locations. We will have to change the way we deliver the security arrangements."

He would not comment on the outrageous attack that PCB president Ijaz Butt made on Broad last week, when Butt called Broad a liar over the failure of Pakistani security.

"I don't want to be emotional about it," Lorgat said. "At a time like this, it's a very difficult period for all those who are faced with it.

"We have to be cool, we have to be correct about what we say and I'd rather wait for that report to come through to see exactly what happened on that fateful morning."

Remarkably, he defended the ICC's attempt to try to play the Champions Trophy in Pakistan last year.

Despite five countries, including Australia, refusing to attend on independent security advice, the ICC refused to move the event, which has now been postponed until later this year.

Lorgat claimed the ICC's security advice only changed early this year after the defeat of the Musharraf government at the general elections.

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Indian intelligence 'linked' to attack on Sri Lankan team: adnkronos

Lahore, 3 March (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Indian intelligence services are behind Tuesday's attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, according to Pakistani analysts. At least five policemen died in the ambush by 12 masked gunmen, and six cricketers and their assistant coach were injured.

Some analysts said India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was behind the attack against the team bus outside Lahore's Ghaddafi Stadium, in which a Pakistani test umpire was critically injured.

“The event was crafted on the pattern of Mumbai attacks of November, 2008 and its aims and objectives are apparently to damage Pakistan’s interests," a defence expert retired major general Jamshed Ayaz told Adnkronos International (AKI).

He was referring to the deadly assault against tourist targets in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai, which killed at least 170 people. India blamed outlawed militant Kashmiri separaratist group Laskar-e-Toiba for the Mumbai attacks.

"This job could only have been done by forces allied with Pakistan’s enemy country,” Ayaz claimed.

The test match has been called off and the Sri Lankan cricket team has flown home, reportedly badly shaken by the attack.

“It is not my place to comment on who was behind the incident but obviously Pakistanis are cricket lovers and they would never do that," former Pakistan Test Cricketer Zaheer Abbas told AKI.

"There is a possibility of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam being behind the event,” said Abbas.

But a spokesperson of the Sri Lankan Embassy in Islamabad denied that the militants from the LTTE were behind the attack. The spokesperson said however that the police motorcade escorting the Sri Lankan cricket team had been the target and that the cricketers were just caught in the crossfire.

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