On Sunday, the FBI with the help of Pakistani agencies also arrested the uncle of Abdul Qudoos of 45-Signals Corps of Pakistan Army from his residence at Sheikhan Road in Kohat Cantt on Sunday. Ten people entered the house of Major Adil, brother of Jamaat leader, Abdul Quddus, whose house was raided a day earlier in Rawalpindi. The FBI officials took Major Adil with them and his whereabouts were not known to his family.
Further arrests as raids continue..<When captured in Pakistan Saturday, Khalid was carrying the names and phone numbers of members of al-Qaeda sleeper cells in North America, according to intelligence officials.>
'The News' reporting today..
Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks and one of Osama bin Laden's most senior lieutenants, was Sunday under interrogation by US FBI agents at an unknown location in Pakistan, security officials said.
Earlier, Pakistani officials said Khalid was handed over to the US following his seizure in a pre-dawn raid in Rawalpindi Saturday and was due to be flown early Sunday to the US-controlled air base at Bagram in Afghanistan, by the interior minister denied the notion.
Khalid, branded by Washington as one of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's "most senior and significant lieutenants", was arrested by Pakistani agents at a house in Rawalpindi before dawn on Saturday. Officials said the other two suspects were a Pakistani, Abdul Quddus, and a foreign national of Arab origin. An intelligence source described the third man as an Egyptian national, but gave no other details.
Senior government officials said the three men were arrested about 3 am local time at a house where Qudoos lives with his father. "He was caught sleeping and there was no resistance," a security official said, declining to be identified.
On Sunday, the FBI with the help of Pakistani agencies also arrested the uncle of Abdul Qudoos of 45-Signals Corps of Pakistan Army from his residence at Sheikhan Road in Kohat Cantt on Sunday. Ten people entered the house of Major Adil, brother of Jamaat leader, Abdul Quddus, whose house was raided a day earlier in Rawalpindi. The FBI officials took Major Adil with them and his whereabouts were not known to his family.
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat insisted that Muhammad was still in Pakistan Sunday and was being interrogated by Pakistani intelligence agents. "He's still with us. We are interrogating him. We would like to keep him for a while. There are certain procedures to be followed and we will follow those procedures before taking any decision on handing the suspect to the US. "Khalid Sheikh Muhammad is in the custody of Pakistan's law-enforcement agencies and until we have satisfied ourselves, after the interrogation process, of the nature of his activities in Pakistan, there is no question of handing him over to anyone," Faisal Saleh Hayat said.
"We have to determine our own security concerns, establish what sort of network he was operating, because we have been facing very serious problems of late," he said. He said they would be tried according to Pakistani laws. If a request was made by the country of their origin, then Pakistan would deal with the case according to its rules and regulations, the minister maintained. Commenting on involvement of any foreign agency in the arrests, Faisal Saleh Hayat said that no foreign agency was involved in the Rawalpindi operation. "This is a major breakthrough," the minister said. "With this we hope to smash the presence of the terror network in Pakistan."
President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman Rashid Qureshi also said Muhammad was in Pakistan and was being jointly interrogated by Pakistani and US agents. Qureshi said Muhammad's fate would depend on the outcome of the interrogation. "The procedure is that whenever a foreigner is caught for suspected links to al-Qaeda, a joint team questions him so that both sides can coordinate with each other," he said.
When captured in Pakistan Saturday, Khalid was carrying the names and phone numbers of members of al-Qaeda sleeper cells in North America, according to intelligence officials. His arrest could disrupt acts of terror in the planning stages, authorities said. Vincent Cannistraro, a former counter terrorism chief for the CIA, said Khalid likely would be interrogated "with some urgency" about al-Qaeda attacks that might be imminent.
Western intelligence officials said Khalid actively recruited "terrorists" for a new wave of attacks against Americans at home and abroad, and is alleged to have worked to develop radioactive "dirty" bombs. "He is probably the only man who knows all the pieces of the puzzle," French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard said. Jacquard said French judicial documents show that Khalid had more meetings with bin Laden than anyone else after the al-Qaeda leader moved from Sudan to Afghanistan.
Khalid succeeded in giving Western intelligence agents the slip on a half-dozen occasions. He narrowly escaped capture in Pakistan last September. US authorities said Khalid was partially educated in the southern US state of North Carolina, where he learned flawless English as a student at Chowan College, a Baptist school.
He also studied at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in the town of Greensboro, where he earned an engineering degree in 1986, according to US authorities. US officials are expected to keep the whereabouts of detained Khalid a closely-guarded secret, intelligence officials said. One intelligence official said Khalid probably would be placed in military or Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) custody and could remain incommunicado for months or even years.
Washington had put a $25 million price on his head and he was one of 22 people on the FBI's list of "most wanted terrorists". His capture "amounts to breaking the backbone of whatever remains of the al-Qaeda operational structure," a Pakistani official said.
On the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) list of 22 most wanted terrorists, Khalid is alleged to have been a key planner of the September 11, 2001 hijacked airplane attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania which killed more than 3,000 people.
Described as highly-intelligent, fluent in four languages and a vital cog in al-Qaeda's financial network, Khalid has been wanted by the United States since 1995 over a plot to blow up aircraft over the Pacific Ocean. Khalid had narrowly eluded Pakistani and US intelligence agents in several raids including one last week in Quetta.
Shortly before the first anniversary of September 11, Muhammad and alleged co-planner Ramzi bin al-Shaiba gave an interview from a hideout in Karachi to a journalist from the Arab al-Jazeera television network detailing how al-Qaeda planned and carried out the attacks on what they called "Holy Tuesday". Khalid "knows a lot, going backward and forward, about al-Qaeda's operations, and that could be valuable if he decides he wants to talk to us," said a top US official long involved in the hunt for him.
US President George W Bush was elated after being told of Mohammed's arrest, one of the biggest coups of the 18-month US-led war on terror. "That's fantastic!" the White House quoted him as saying.
Australia welcomed Sunday the announcement by Pakistan of the arrest of suspected terrorist mastermind Khalid Shaikh Muhammad. Prime Minister John Howard described the arrest of Khalid as "a huge catch." "I'm told by people who know that he really is a big catch. He is the number three person," Howard told the Nine Network. "He is regarded as having been the technical mastermind of the attacks on America on the 11th of September so if in fact the arrest has taken place, and I have no reason to doubt that, he is a huge catch." |
