Bin Laden deputy 'was planning more US hijackings'
From Tim Reid in Washington and Zahid Hussein in Islamabad
timesonline.co.uk
KHALID Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks who was arrested on Saturday in Pakistan, was planning to strike American targets again.
A US intelligence report written three days before his capture said that Mohammed, 38, the operations chief for Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, had directed agents to target bridges, gasworks and power plants in the US, including New York.
His arrest in a pre-dawn raid on a house in Rawalpindi, near the Pakistani capital, led to optimism that US and Pakistani agents were closing in on bin Laden. A senior Pakistani official said: “We may be one step away from bin Laden. His probability of being in a crowded city (in Pakistan) appears much greater.”
Mohammed was found asleep in a house in Rawalpindi owned by Abdul Qadoos. Dr Qadoos’s son, Ahmed, 42, a leader of the militant Jamaat i-Islami party, was also arrested, as was a third man believed to be an Egyptian national. Ahmed Qadoos’s wife said that some of the agents who took part in the raid “were speaking English and were looking like foreigners from their accent and fair complexion”. |
