Karachi, May 20: Pakistani police have arrested an Islamic militant linked to a plot to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf in the southern port city of Karachi two years ago, officials said today. Kamran Atif, 28, was captured during a fierce gun battle as police raided a home in central Karachi where he was hiding. A woman passerby was killed in crossfire.

"It's a big catch," an official from the police crimes investigation department told news agencies, requesting anonymity. An accomplice managed to escape during the raid.

Atif is alleged to have been in charge of pressing the detonator to blow up a remote-controlled car bomb parked on a highway as Musharraf's motorcade passed by from Karachi airport in April 2002. The detonator failed to work and the plot was aborted.

Four other militants were tried and convicted last year over the botched and sentenced to life prison terms.

Atif, wounded in yesterday's gunfight, was taken to hospital yelling "the defeat is the fate of infidels. Muslims will prevail," witnesses said.
Explosives and Islamic militant Jihadi literature were found in the house.

Atif belonged to a splinter group of a militant outfit fighting in Jammu and Kashmir known as Harkat-ul Mujahedin al-Alaami.

The four other men jailed over the plot were from the same outfit.
Bureau Report