Al Qaeda Trainer in U.S. Hands By Bradley Graham and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 5, 2002; Page A01
U.S. military forces have taken custody of a high-ranking paramilitary trainer for al Qaeda, the most senior member of the terrorist network captured in the three-month war in Afghanistan, Pentagon and intelligence officials said yesterday.
Officials identified the man as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi and said he was apprehended and handed over to U.S. authorities by Pakistani forces within the past day or two.
In a related development, defense officials reported an agreement with Pakistan to turn over to U.S. control the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, who would be one of the highest-ranking Taliban officials to fall into U.S. hands. "The arrangements are being made now as to where, when and how he'll be taken into custody, but the basic deal is done," a senior defense official said.
The capture of al-Libi represents a significant victory in the Bush administration's campaign to dismantle al Qaeda, since it deprives the terrorist network of one of its top activists. It also marks a potential intelligence windfall as the United States seeks information on the whereabouts of other senior al Qaeda figures, including Osama bin Laden, and attempts to forestall other possible attacks by determining how the terrorist network operates.
Al-Libi, a Libyan, is known to U.S. officials as a particularly close associate of Abu Zubaydah, one of bin Laden's most senior advisers. Zubaydah, in turn, is thought to have taken over as al Qaeda's top military strategist following the death of Muhammad Atef in a U.S. bombing raid in Afghanistan in November.
According to U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, al-Libi was responsible for paramilitary training at the Khaldan camp in Afghanistan run by al Qaeda. Among those who trained at the facility were Zacarias Moussaoui, who is on trial in Northern Virginia on charges of conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian convicted in a plot to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999.
Al-Libi was one of 12 al Qaeda figures on the original list of individuals and organizations whose assets were frozen by President Bush on Sept. 26 following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which U.S. authorities say were planned and executed by al Qaeda.
The Pentagon reported yesterday that U.S. forces had custody of 273 members of al Qaeda or of the deposed Taliban regime that sheltered them, with the number rising daily as American interrogators sort through the several thousand other prisoners being held by local Afghan militias. Most of the U.S. detainees are under guard at the Marine base at the Kandahar airport. The United States has yet to determine how their cases will be adjudicated, though the Pentagon has been drawing up plans for special military commissions to try suspected senior terrorists.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the U.S. operation in Afghanistan, said yesterday that some detainees would begin moving in a week or 10 days to a high-security jail under construction at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
According to Pentagon and CIA sources, questioning of the detainees, along with a review of captured al Qaeda documents and computer hard drives, is proving helpful in piecing together a more complete picture of how the terrorist network functioned.
"We've learned which countries they used as safe havens because they have tough extradition laws, others used as transit points because of lax airport security, and those used for money transfers because the banking systems are weak," one Pentagon official said.
The official said the evidence has led U.S. authorities to "look for very specific people like chauffeurs who may have driven bin Laden or doctors who may have treated him." Although the information has not revealed where bin Laden is today, he added, "it lets us create a timeline of where he was at certain times, learning his habits, which may aid in predicting where he may go in the future."
At a Pentagon news conference Thursday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said some of the newly developed information had enabled U.S. authorities to thwart some planned terrorist attacks and initiate surveillance of other suspected terrorists.
"Information on computer disks has been particularly amazing," one Pentagon official said.
Another official, who three weeks ago attributed at least three arrests to material collected in Afghanistan, said yesterday "that figure had grown."
Because of the ongoing nature of the intelligence-gathering effort, U.S. officials have been reluctant to detail preliminary findings or even release the identities of any senior al Qaeda or Taliban members in custody.
But Kenton Keith, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, last week provided the most extensive public accounting so far of what has become of the al Qaeda leadership. He distributed a chart with 42 names of senior al Qaeda members, six of whom were shown as "killed in action," including Atef, bin Laden aides Muhammad Salah, Assadullah and Tariq Anwar al-Sayyid Ahmad, the group's operational coordinator Abu Saleh al-Yemeni and trainer Abu Ubaida. Two others -- identified as Abdul Aziz and Abu Faisal -- were listed as detained in mid-December. The rest were described by Keith as either in hiding or on the run.
Keith also issued a list of 27 Taliban leaders, showing one -- Jalaluddin Haqqani -- killed in action and two -- Mahammad Fazal and Noorullah Nori -- reported as prisoners of war.
"If you take the top 10 or 15 Taliban, the top 10 or 15 al Qaeda, you know, in each case, there are some that are dead, a small number," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Thursday. "There are some that are captured. There are some that we believe are dead and have no evidence that they're alive, but we also can't prove that they're not alive. And some names have been in the press already, and I'm sure others will be released as we go along."
At a news conference in Tampa yesterday, Franks said U.S. authorities did not know whether bin Laden was alive or dead or even still in Afghanistan. He said U.S. troops had searched seven of eight known al Qaeda cave complexes in the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, blasted last month by U.S. bombing, and found "evidence of considerable loss of life there." Searchers also found heavy weapons, including one or two tanks, inside some of the caves.
The general said U.S. forces also had searched 40 of 48 al Qaeda camps and other sites in Afghanistan, but had not found any chemical, biological or radiation weapons despite evidence that al Qaeda was seeking such arms.
"What we have found is considerable indication of interest and desire by al Qaeda to acquire weapons of mass destruction," Franks said. "We have not yet found evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction inside Afghanistan."
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