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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (43707)	3/7/2003 1:08:51 PM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

U.S., Pakistani Officials Center Hunt for Bin Laden on Caravan printerfriendly.abcnews.com March 7 — U.S. and Pakistani officials have narrowed their search for Osama bin Laden to a caravan near the border of southwestern Pakistan, ABCNEWS has learned. The CIA and Pakistani Army are electronically tracking the large caravan of people on foot and horseback through the rugged mountain area of Pakistan between the borders with Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistani officials told ABCNEWS. Osama bin Laden may be traveling with the caravan and may be on foot. Officials have cast a net around the caravan — using electronic U.S. surveillance and planes with cameras that can see through darkness to monitor its movement along a trail. U.S. officials say they are not 100 percent sure that bin Laden is in the caravan, but they have a high degree of probability that he is and have closed off the area to all other traffic. The area is so rugged that officials may not be able to move in with military vehicles, but instead could launch an operation with CIA paramilitary forces attacking the caravan from helicopters if it is determined that bin Laden is there. President Bush has also authorized the launch of a missile attack if bin Laden is positively identified. Bin Laden's son Saad was recently in the Iranian capital, Tehran, European anti-terrorism officials told ABCNEWS, and it was a cell phone call to him that turned authorities onto bin Laden's trail "His son, apparently Saad, is in Iran and some of his wives also are in Iran and he has made apparently a big mistake," said ABCNEWS terrorism consultant Vince Cannistraro. Though bin Laden's voice patterns were identified in the intercepted cell phone conversation, U.S. officials are aware that the call could have been a decoy to try to get bin Laden's pursuers off the trail. When it was believed that bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora in Afghanistan, the al Qaeda kingpin gave a cell phone and a tape recording of his voice to a group that headed out of the region in one direction, while the terror chief snuck out in another. Either way, U.S. officials say they want to get bin Laden on the run, because as long as he remains holed up in one location he is more difficult to find than when he is traveling. Information From Terror Lieutenant The hunt for the Saudi-born terrorist mastermind reached a fever pitch late Thursday, with the launch of major military operations in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, with teams of CIA agents directly involved in the hunt for America's most-wanted terrorist. That search centered on two areas in Baluchistan. One near the northern city of Chaman, near the Afghan border, where planes dropped leaflets on Thursday reminding people of the $25 million reward for bin Laden. The sudden optimism that the world's most-wanted terrorist may soon be captured, officials say, was sparked by information obtained following the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a top-ranking al Qaeda leader, in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi over the weekend. Mohammed is believed to be the third-ranking al Qaeda leader and the chief operations planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials say a number of documents were seized from the Rawalpindi house where he was arrested along with Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged financier of the attacks on America. There have been widespread reports that the interrogation of Mohammed, who is believed to be at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, would lead to the capture of the al Qaeda leader. Unconfirmed Sightings There have been numerous unconfirmed reports of bin Laden sightings in the area on both sides of the Pakistani-Iranian border. "They definitely have him pinned down to a small area. This will be a major operation," Cannistraro said. Mohammed also reportedly told his interrogators that he had met bin Laden within the last month. Authorities believe information from Mohammed's cell phones dovetails with other information they already had, which leads them to believe they have a very good lead on bin Laden's whereabouts. Earlier this week, Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said several weapons, computer discs and papers were seized during Mohammed's arrest. But he cast doubts on reports that Mohammed had met bin Laden in recent weeks. Ahmed did not, however, deny that Mohammed and bin Laden had been in contact with each other in recent weeks. "Nowadays to have a meeting, you do not need to be present personally," he said. "This meeting can take place via computer, and there are many ways of meeting." There were also reports in the Pakistani press that some of the documents seized during Mohammed's arrest were letters written in Arabic, including handwritten notes by bin Laden. Whether or not bin Laden actually can be brought in and tried remains an open question. U.S. officials who have interrogated al Qaeda prisoners say bin Laden would not want to be taken alive. "I always had this dream of seeing him in an orange prisoners' jump suit that said 'Metropolitan Correctional Center' [in New York City], but I think he will want to shoot it out because he has scripted his own demise," said Jack Cloonan, an FBI bin Laden investigator until he retired recently. "He wants to be a martyr."

To: NickSE who wrote (43707)	3/8/2003 3:47:56 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

War of nerves, what you see is not what is happening, in a classic trap of high espionage and close follow up. I assume that Al Qaeda operatives are being caged with some very quality followup by the joint work of CIA and ISI, look at this story.. Khalid Shaikh was arrested in mid-January, declared captive on March 1 By Azfar-ul-Ashfaque KARACHI: The man who managed to escape from the house in Gulshan-e-Maymar during a joint raid carried out by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and police was Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and he was caught in the mid of January in Karachi, highly placed intelligence sources disclosed it to The News. On January 9 two Al-Qaeda activists, Abu Hamza and Abu Omar, were arrested from a house of a woman leader of Jamaat-e-Islami in Gulshan-e-Maymar area. Informed sources said Khalid Shaikh was also hiding in that house along with two other militants and managed to escape as Abu Omar and Abu Hamza gave cover to him by opening fire and throwing hand grenades on police which made easy his escape. At that time the police sources said that one man made his escape owing to the slackness of the Rangers who were assigned to cordon off the backyard of the house during the operation. But as the encounter started the Ranger personnel escaped from the scene to save their lives. Initially, the sources said, Abu Hamza and Abu Omar disclosed the identity of the fleeing man as Ameer Mouavia but later they retracted from their statements and confessed that they were residing with Khalid Shaikh Muhammad. Pakistani intelligence officials kept such disclosure secret and worked hard to nab the fleeing man. During the raid the law-enforcement agencies had recovered three AK-47 assault rifles, five hand grenades, a satellite phone, a laptop, few CDs, some books, about one million rupees and US$ 25,000 from the house. Sources said Khalid Shaikh who was armed with an Ak-47 assault rifle suffered bullet injuries while fleeing. He had thrown away his rifle in Gulshan-e-Maymar, which was later recovered from the bushes behind a government school. Well-placed sources said ISI managed to trace Khalid Shaikh after hectic efforts of more than 72 hours after the Gulshan-e-Maymar encounter by using sniffer dogs and the data of the laptop. They keep a vigil on Khalid Shaikh who got refugee in a house in the outskirts of Karachi. According to a senior officer, Khalid Shaikh was treated in that house and one of his hosts used to buy medicines for him from a medical store situated miles away from that house. The ISI waited for the right time and then caught him after four days. Soon after his arrest he was shifted to a safe house in Karachi where he was investigated by high-ranking military officials. His arrest was kept secret from the present government and only a few military aides of President General Pervez Musharraf had knowledge about Khalid's arrest. Pakistani agencies thoroughly interrogated Khalid Shaikh, particularly in connection with any of his possible links and any meeting with Osama bin Laden in Pakistan or Afghanistan. A senior security official disclosed that Khalid Shaikh had no knowledge about the presence of Bin Laden in Pakistan. Intelligence sources said that Pakistani officials raided a house in Rawalpindi but Khalid was not arrested from there. However, the raid was conducted on Khalid's pointation. However, the news of Khalid Shaikh's arrest was leaked when he was handed over to the United States authorities on March 1. "He was handed over to the American CIA officials on March 1 and they had leaked the news to the western media," sources said, adding that local investigators had captured many Al-Qaeda activists during the month-long investigations with Khalid Shaikh Muhammad. As a matter of fact, according to the official version Khalid Shaikh was arrested from Rawalpindi and not from Karachi.