Capital City Police Officer (CCPO), Muhammad Aslam Tareen was awarded "Tamgha Imtiaz" here on Wednesday by Pakistan Government at a ceremony held at Governor House on the occasion of Pakistan Resolution Day 23rd March. The Governor Punjab conferred this medal on CCPO Lahore Muhammad Aslam Tareen, who has already received two highest medals from the Federal Government, including Quaid-e-Azam Medal.
Muhammad Aslam Tareen has been awarded the honour of "Tamgha Imtiaz" for displaying best strategy and bravery displayed during attack by terrorists on GHQ, during his previous posting as Regional Police Officer (RPO) Rawalpindi. During the ceremony, the citation of award was readout to the audience informing them that on 10th October 2009, terrorists unleashed a deadly attack on the nerve center of Pakistan Army its General Headquarters, and killed a number of army men while taking others as hostages. The mettle of Muhammad Aslam Tareen, Regional Police Officer, Rawalpindi was thus put to test and with his remarkable acumen and mastery in skills of negotiations, unnerved the terrorists beyond the capacity to kill.
On this fateful day, a group of highly trained terrorists in Military uniform attacked the GHQ as well as his second-in-command along with a number of other officials. After the killing spree, they took more than 50 persons as hostages in one of the compound and tried to blackmail the government for the acceptance of their unscrupulous demands.
The situation got worse when the terrorists threatened to kill the hostages one by one and set a deadline for acceptance of their demands. The authorities were in a fix as how to deal with this situation and to save the lives of innocent people. It was a moment when the services of Muhammad Aslam Tareen, DIGP came to the fore. Being a qualified negotiator, he was given a SOS call by the army authorities for the arduous task of negotiating with the terrorists to buy time for the operation by SSG troops.
He monitored the movements and activities of the highly trained militants and started engaging them one by one via telephone. During his relentless efforts he went step by step engaging the terrorists by using social, psychological, scientific and technical techniques of skilful negotiations.
With his mastery skills of negotiation, he kept the terrorists engaged for nine long hours which provided the crucial time to Elite SSG Commandos to work out a detailed assault strategy for saving the innocent lives and when the first shot was fired by the SSG Commandos in the small hours the terrorists were already down to their knees.
Thus the tact and intellect of Muhamad Aslam Tareen in this crisis paid the dividends in the form of elimination of the terrorists and the arrest of the gang leader Aqeel alias Dr Usman alive which later on helped the investigator to apprehend the planners of this gory incident and dismantle their terrorist network throughout the country.