Attack on Sri Lankan cricketers was kidnap plot

The terrorist group which launched the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team planned to kidnap the players and swap them for militants jailed in Pakistan, according to one of the gunmen.
In an interview with Ahmad Faraz of Pakistan's Geo News television channel, Abdul Wahab, who was caught and jailed following the attack, said the raid was planned with militant leaders of the Lashkar e Jhangvi terrorist group in Waziristan. The LeJ is linked to various al-Qaeda and Taliban groups and has carried out a number of attacks on Christians and Shia Muslims.
The raid, in which six policemen and a driver were killed, left seven players and their coach injured. The ease with which the terrorists were able to strike at the players' team bus provoked serious criticism of the Pakistani authorities and calls for the country to be banned from hosting international cricket matches.
Abdul Wahab was one of 12 attackers who arrived on rickshaws close to Lahore's Gaddafi cricket stadium and ambushed the bus carrying the Sri Lankan team with a hail of machine gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. At the time the attack appeared to be inspired by the 2008 Mumbai attack in which ten terrorists killed 166 people in a three-day massacre.
In an interview with Geo News, Wahab, who is also known as Omar, said the group's plan had been to kidnap members of the Sri Lankan cricket team and hold them hostage until they could trade their freedom for the release of Lashkar e Jhangvi militants held in jail.
"The operation was planned in Waziristan and there were 12 of us designated for this mission. I belonged to the Lashkar e Jhangvi Amjad Farooqi group. We were supposed to take them hostage and then our superiors would have bargained their release in exchange for some of our companions in their custody," he said.He and his comrades had arrived at the Liberty roundabout close to the city centre a few minutes before the team bus. "We came in a rickshaw and on motorcycles that we had purchased for this operation," he added.