Behind the Chairman’s Door

car_bomb Bomb Defused Outside Potter Launch In Pakistan Pakistan police say they have defused a bomb outside a shopping center where the latest Harry Potter book was scheduled to be launched.

Karachi police investigation chief Manzoor Mughal says the man behind the “immature” bomb plot phoned police after having an apparent change of heart because of the many children at the site.

“Police have foiled an attempt to blow up a car bomb by remote control outside the Park Towers and defused 10 kilograms of explosives in a stolen car,” he said.

“Had it exploded, it would have caused a huge loss of lives.

“There were several hundred people inside Park Towers at the time we received the call from an unknown person that a bomb was about to explode.”

The warning prompted the cancellation of the official launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the Liberty Books shop in the shopping center in Pakistan’s largest city.

Police are trying to trace the call and are interviewing the woman from whom the car was stolen at gunpoint on July 10 for a description of the thief.

Around 2,000 Pakistani fans, mostly children and youths, had reserved copies of the book at the launch amid global Potter mania.

A wave of deadly suicide bombings and other attacks has claimed more than 200 lives in a week in Pakistan in apparent backlash violence to the Army’s deadly storming of a pro-Taliban mosque in Islamabad earlier this month.

But senior Karachi police officer Mohammed Javed says the design of the Karachi bomb, in powder form in two containers, in the car parked 200 meters from the site points to an “immature” attack plot.

“Police couldn’t find a trigger,” he said, adding that a walkie-talkie found in the trunk was apparently not wired up to the bomb.

“It looks like an immature attempt. It looks more like a threat.

“It does not have the signature of the hardcore militants we have been dealing with.”