Al Qaeda planned attacks on airports
ISLAMABAD, Aug 5: Al Qaeda planned suicide attacks on Karachi airport and an airbase used by President Pervez Musharraf while a cell in Britain planned an attack on London's Heathrow airport , intelligence sources said on Thursday.
Al Qaeda suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, who was arrested almost two weeks ago, told interrogators of the plans for suicide attacks inside Pakistan, a source said.
"During interrogations Ghailani revealed plans for suicide attacks at Chaklala airbase and Karachi's international airport," the source said. Maps of Heathrow and the names of some of 12 suspected Al Qaeda operatives arrested in the past two days in Britain were found on a computer belonging to another suspect, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested last month.
"The entire crackdown in London is based on the information extracted from him," a government official said. "Maps of Heathrow airport were found from his computer which was one of their targets."
Another high-level government source commented on Al Qaeda's two-pronged strategy. "They want to carry out a big attack in Europe. In Pakistan they want to target government officials," the source said.
Information from Khalfan Ghailani and Naeem Khan was cited as a reason for the US decision to issue a high alert against a possible attack. The high-level government official in Islamabad enthused over the quality of the information captured.
"This is a big catch," he said. "Even their mid-level operatives disclose very frightening information." Ghailani was found with a computer and more than 150 disks which one intelligence source said contained maps of "important places" in Pakistan, the United States and Israel.
"The CDs they decoded contained maps of important places in the United States and Israel as well as Chaklala airbase, Karachi international airport and key military installations in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad," the source said.
The disks also contained images of US forces' actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the source said. Ghailani, one of the Al Qaeda members wanted by the United States for the 1998 East African US embassy bombings, was arrested with 13 others, including three women and five children, almost two weeks ago after a fire fight in Gujrat.
The United States has offered a five million dollars reward for his capture. -Reuters |
