9 Suspected al-Qaida Arrested in Pakistan
Dec 19, 9:15 AM (ET)
By ASIF SHAHZADA
LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) - Police arrested nine suspected al-Qaida operatives including two Americans and a Canadian in a joint raid with FBI agents in this eastern city Thursday.
All nine were of Pakistani origin and belong to the same family.
Pakistan Television reported an exchange of gunfire during the arrest.
"We got information about these people and today the police went there and made these arrests. We can say they are suspected al-Qaida," Sheikh Rashid, Pakistan's information minister, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
He said some of the men might have been smuggling weapons for terrorist attacks.
Among those arrested was Dr. Javed Ahmad, who was taken from his home in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, said a senior Interior Ministry official.
Security agents and FBI officials searched Ahmad's home for at least two hours. They also arrested his two sons, two brothers, three nephews and one uncle.
Ahmad, a Pakistani, lived in the United States between 1972 and 1983. Two of the others arrested were naturalized Americans and one a naturalized Canadian.
"Pakistani security agencies accompanied by foreigners (FBI agents) arrested our family members like they were criminals," Marghoob Ahmad Mir, a brother-in-law of Ahmad, told a news conference in Lahore.
FBI and police seized four computers and several compact discs. It was not clear what they expected to find.
Ahmad's other family members have denied he or his relatives are involved with al-Qaida.
Ahmad is the second Pakistani doctor to be arrested for alleged links to Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives. On Oct. 21, authorities arrested Dr. Amer Aziz, a British-trained orthopedic surgeon, and held him incommunicado for a month.
apnews.excite.com |
