When rogue Pakistan Navy officers tried to hijack a 'nuclear-armed' warship — SkimNews
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- Lieutenants Zeeshan Rafiq and Owais Jakhrani, al-Qaeda members, boarded the PNS Zulfiquar on September 6, 2014 with smuggled weapons and duplicate keys to the missile and operations rooms, planning to hijack the warship and attack US Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea.
- The PNS Zulfiquar, a 3,144-tonne Chinese-built Type F-22P frigate under Pakistan's Naval Strategic Forces Command, had tested C-802 cruise missiles in December 2012 that could carry a nuclear warhead with a 2-4 kiloton yield.
- The USNS Supply, a 44,000-tonne US fast combat support ship deployed in the north Arabian Sea with Coalition Task Force 150, was the plot's prime target; the plan called for firing on the Supply, sinking its escort frigate, then attacking any responding US warship.
- An alert sentry at Karachi harbour spotted co-conspirators in marine uniforms approaching in a dinghy, sparking a gun battle that killed Rafiq, Jakhrani, and one other attacker before they could reach the warship or use their weapons stash.
- Five surviving co-conspirators — Sub-Lieutenants Hammad Ahmed, Irfanullah, Muhammad Hammad, Arsalan Nazeer, and Hashim Naseer — were sentenced to death in March 2016 by a secret naval tribunal; their death sentences were stayed in 2024.
- Per Steve Coll's 2018 book Directorate S, India's R&AW informed the National Security Adviser roughly six weeks after the attack that a nuclear warhead had been aboard the PNS Zulfiquar — a report Coll noted could not be verified.
Why it matters: If the R&AW report cited by Steve Coll is accurate, the 2014 attack would mark the first known armed terrorist assault on a nuclear-weapons facility. With Pakistan's economy in crisis and the five surviving conspirators' death sentences stayed in 2024, the unresolved question is how many radicalised officers might remain inside Pakistan's military.
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