Pakistani teen tells of his recruitment, training as suicide bomber

As a former madrasa student-turned-suicide bomber, Khan's experience is one of the greatest challenges Pakistan confronts. Brainwashed to challenge Pakistan's status as a secular multicultural state, he was a homegrown terrorist with the ability to put those radical thoughts into deadly action.

Khan is just one of countless young boys recruited by a network of Taliban commanders from the country's many unregulated religious madrasas. His story highlights the difficult road ahead for Pakistani authorities in ending the war on terror.

"I wanted to be an engineer and a good Muslim by going to school and madrasa both, but they [the Taliban] shattered my ambitions and changed my life," he says.

Last Sunday, Abdur Razzaq, a militant commander known to be a suicide bomber recruiter, was arrested in a predominantly Pashtun neighborhood in Karachi. Mr. Razzaq then helped police unearth an Islamic militant ring involved in the recruitment of teenage madrasa students, including Khan and a friend of his, to be trained as suicide bombers in North Waziristan.

Razzaq has worked closely with Wali Mehsud. Mr. Mehsud is deputy to one of the deadliest militant leaders, Qari Hussain, who was reportedly killed in a drone attack last year. Mr. Hussain was notorious for his Taliban leadership and for running suicide bomber training centers along the Afghanistan border.

“Abdur Razzaq was deputed by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP] to recruit young, innocent boys as suicide bombers and worked directly under high command of Taliban. He is a trained terrorist,” says senior police investigator Chaudhary Aslam of the police’s Crime Investigation Department. “He would lure the innocent madrasa boys with his jihadi brainwashing.” One such boy was Khan.

Teen says 400 Pakistan suicide bombers in training

By Sajjad Tarakzai (AFP) – Apr 8, 2011

ISLAMABAD — A teenager arrested as an accomplice to Pakistan's deadliest suicide bombing of the year has said that up to 400 suicide bombers are being groomed to wage carnage in the nuclear-armed nation.

Umar Fidayee, 14, said the would-be bombers were being trained in North Waziristan, the premier Al-Qaeda and Taliban fortress in Pakistan's tribal belt where US officials want Pakistan to flush out militant strongholds.

He made the remarks in an interview aired Friday from his hospital bedside, where he is being treated after detonating a hand grenade in the April 3 attack that killed 50 people at a 13th-century Sufi shrine.

It was Pakistan's deadliest bomb attack since November.

Pakistan : Fedayeen-e-Islam boasts 1,000 suicide bombers trained in North Waziristan camps

200 child fidayeen rescued in Pakistan

PTI Jul 29, 2009, 12.24am IST

ISLAMABAD: About 200 boys, some as young as six years, were rescued by Pakistani security forces from Taliban camps in the lawless Swat valley where they were being "brainwashed" and trained to become suicide bombers.

The troops have kept the children in Mardan area where they will go through "mental rehabilitation" with the help of psychiatrists so that they can return to a normal life.

The boys, whose ages range between 6 and 13 years, have been so thoroughly "brainwashed" that they consider all others as "infidels", senior North West Frontier Province minister Bashir Bilour was quoted as telling the Geo News channel. "These children have brainwashed in a way that now they even want to kill their own parents," he said, adding, however they were not administered any drugs.

Bilour said some children were pleased when they were handed over to their parents. But, a few days later, the parents came back with complaints that the boys are now threatening to "kill them", the report said.

Several would-be suicide bombers had been rescued from the captivity of militants, Mingora commander Brigadier Tahir Hameed also told the media.

"We are trying to bring them back on track," he said adding, "arrangements are now being made to enrol them in schools with free boarding and lodging and give them monthly scholarships."

He said the Taliban turned to children for using them as suicide bombers because they were easily influenced and less likely to be caught while undertaking an operation.

"They are told that the Pakistani army has become an enemy of Islam, as it is fighting for Christians and Jews," said a senior official involved in the interrogation of potential suicide bombers who have been captured.

Al Qaeda's fidayeen 'nursery' catches them young
Last updated on: May 21, 2008 01:15 IST

Al Qaeda-linked terrorists have transformed a government-run school in the restive tribal region of Pakistan into a nursery for suicide bombers, training children as young as nine.

"It was like a factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys and turning them into suicide bombers," Maj Gen Tariq Khan, the commander of the division that captured the area, was quoted in The Daily Telegraph as saying on Tuesday.

The camp was located in a territory in South Waziristan where the notorious Pakistani Taliban [ Images ] commander, Baitullah Mehsud, operates.

At another location, military investigators found film footage on a DVD that they believed depicts children at the school being trained in suicide bombing.

The footage, shown to journalists, contained images of a masked teacher instructing rows of school children who wore white headbands inscribed with Quranic verses.

Maj Gen Athar Abbas, the army's chief spokesman, said the school and a hospital had been taken over by terrorists "to prepare children for suicide attacks and for making improvised explosive devices."

During operations in the area, the soldiers had rounded up over 50 boys who were undergoing suicide attack training, the report said. Many of the boys had been kidnapped.

Most of them were from the ethnic Pushtun belt of the North West Frontier Province and some were locals from South Waziristan.

"The boys were handed to an NGO to be looked at," Maj Gen Abbas said.

He said in the operation in January, the army found jackets and ball bearings which are used in suicide attacks.

Since January last year, Pakistan has witnessed over 80 suicide attacks that have killed more than 1,000 people.

Many of the suicide attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan -- some reported to have involved teenagers and even younger children -- have also originated on the Pakistani side of the border, the report said.