Pakistani tip leads to British Qaeda arrest
ISLAMABAD: A tip-off from Pakistani investigators led to Britain’s arrest of a senior Al Qaeda operative, a Pakistani intelligence officer said on Wednesday.
He declined to name the suspect, and could not say whether he was among the 13 men whose arrest was announced by London police for “alleged international terrorism”.
Interrogations and computer records found on two key Al Qaeda suspects Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Pakistani computer mastermind Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan arrested in July in Pakistan yielded information which Pakistani authorities passed on to their counterparts in London, he said. “The computers and CDs we seized from Khan gave us deep insight into the planning and working of Al Qaeda,” the officer said. “The information gleaned from him and Ghailani and from the computers has been passed on to the United States and Britain.”
Police were questioning on Wednesday a dozen men held after a series of raids in London and across England triggered by intelligence on “alleged international terrorism”.
A 13th man arrested in north London as part of Tuesday’s raids has been released without charge, police said. The men, aged between 19 and 32, were suspected by police of involvement in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Witnesses described on Wednesday the dramatic daylight raids, as police continued to search a number of addresses in London, central England, and the northwest town of Blackburn. BBC television, citing police sources, said the suspects were “all of (south) Asian origin”, and that it was thought that at least some of them were British nationals.
Tuesday’s arrests came as Prime Minister Tony Blair came under pressure to spell out the level of the terrorism threat in Britain, as a massive security operation continued in US cities. agencies |
