Pakistan captures six al-Qaeda suspects
(Updated at 1815 PST)
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has arrested six "high-profile" al-Qaeda suspects who were allegedly planning a terror attack in Pakistan, a news agency reported Wednesday quoting the interior ministry sources.
"During a raid yesterday (Tuesday) in Karachi we arrested six al-Qaeda suspects including Waleed Mohammad bin Attash," the spokesman said. "They were planning a terrorist attack in Pakistan and that has been foiled."
Some 150 kilograms of high-powered explosives and a large cache of ammunition were found on the men, the spokesman said.
Around 450 al-Qaeda suspects have been rounded up in Pakistan in the past 18 months, including top al-Qaeda operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Ramzi bin al-Shaiba, alleged September 11 terror co-planners, and key Osama bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah.
Pakistan Arrests Six Terror Suspects
1 minute ago
By AFZAL NADEEM, Associated Press Writer
KARACHI, Pakistan - Pakistani police have arrested six men linked to al-Qaida, including a Yemeni man wanted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole (news - web sites), an Interior Ministry official said Wednesday.
The country's interior minister said the arrests prevented "a major terrorist attack" with the arrests.
Waleed Mohammed Bin Attash, best known as Tawfiq bin Attash or Tawfiq Attash Khallad, was arrested Tuesday during a pair of raids conducted in southern Karachi by Pakistani authorities.
"This is a big catch. Attash is wanted in the USS Cole bombing," said Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the head of Pakistan's counterterrorism unit. "I think he is very important."
U.S. counterterrorism officials in Washington confirmed the capture of the suspect, also known as Khallad, and described him as one of the most-wanted al-Qaida fugitives. Khallad was active in plotting new attacks, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said President Bush (news - web sites) was grateful to Pakistan for a "hopeful and significant capture."
"It's been another strong day of Pakistani cooperation in the war against terror," he said.
A CIA (news - web sites) officer once described Khallad as a "major-league killer."
U.S. intelligence officials said Khallad is suspected of meeting with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. Those hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon (news - web sites).
Khallad was in Afghanistan (news - web sites) for much of the planning of the attacks and was believed to have moved to Pakistan by late 2002, officials said.
He also is believed to have helped plan the suicide attack of the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. The American destroyer was rammed Oct. 12, 2000, by an explosives-laden dinghy while refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. Yemen is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and the attack was blamed on al-Qaida.
Another suspected mastermind of the Cole bombing — Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, al-Qaida's chief of operations for the Persian Gulf — is in U.S. custody after being detained in an undisclosed foreign country last year.
The names of the other suspects were not immediately known, although Interior Minister Saleh Faisal Hayyat said one suspect was the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, said Hayyat.
Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March.
Cheema said all six suspects still are in Pakistan. There was no indication they were among a group of suspects in the Cole bombing who escaped a Yemeni prison earlier this month.
U.S. law enforcement agencies have not yet questioned the suspects, Cheema told The Associated Press in the capital, Islamabad.
The raids "were solely a Pakistani operation," Cheema said. "We didn't say anything before now because we wanted to see whether we could make more arrests."
Police sources said the first lead came Monday when authorities stopped a pickup truck carrying explosives among sacks of potatoes. The three Pakistani militants who were arrested led police to a fourth Pakistani man, who was arrested Tuesday and led police to Khallad, the police sources said.
Pakistani authorities also recovered 330 pounds of explosives and a large quantity of arms, ammunitions and detonators "intended to be used for terrorist attacks," said a statement by Cheema's National Crisis Management Cell, which oversees Pakistan's anti-terrorist activities.
Hayyat, the interior minister, said, "With these arrests a major terrorist attack has been averted in Pakistan."
U.S. intelligence sources previously said they feared al-Qaida fugitives who fled the U.S.-led coalition's war on terror in neighboring Afghanistan had found a safe haven in southern Karachi, Pakistan's largest city of 14 million people.
Several top al-Qaida members have been captured in Pakistan.
Last September, Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the attacks in the United States, was captured after a gun battle in southern Karachi.
In March 2002, Abu Zubaydah, once bin Laden's top terror coordinator, was caught in the city of Faisalabad.
Several weeks ago, another key al-Qaida man, Yassir al-Jaziri, was captured in the eastern city of Lahore. Al-Jaziri was described as a key subordinate who facilitated communications between al-Qaida operatives.
Al-Jaziri was among the top two dozen most-wanted al-Qaida men.
Pakistan has been a key U.S. ally in the global war on terror. It stopped supporting Afghanistan's hardline Taliban regime before the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaida started in October 2001.
Since then, Pakistan has arrested more than 450 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban within its borders. |
