Chennai: Tamil Nadu police has stepped up search for two Iraqi nationals who escaped from a high-security prison in Baghdad in the first week of August as part of a gang of 14 after assaulting the guards there. The Interpol has sounded an ‘Orange Notice’ and released pictures of the two men, Al Lammi Qahtan and Al Shwaili Sadeq, which the state police has now sent to all its district headquarters for intensifying the search for the fugitives.
It is stated that all the prisoners, who had staged the bold and desperate escape from the Al-prison, were drug offenders. That incident caused a media uproar in Iraq and the government sacked its Baghdad police chief and a couple of senior officers as well, while ordering launch of manhunt for the escaped prisoners.
While 12 men were caught within a few days of the jailbreak, Al Lammi and Al Shwaili, managed to escape across the border. There is strong suspicion they might have crossed into Tamil Nadu as part of a terror team readied by Pakistan to cause terror attacks for creating unrest as a retaliation for the Indian Government action in Jammu and Kashmir, sources said.
Al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility for an earlier jailbreak in Iraq, so there is suspicion now that this escape from the Al-Qanat police station jail in East Baghdad too could have been engineered by the banned outfit to carry out its strikes in India in support of Pakistan, sources said.
“Terror and drugs have been close cousins in the underworld, so we must be very caution and thorough in this case”, said an officer requesting anonymity.
