ISLAMABAD, 12 June 2005 — The arrest of two suspected Al-Qaeda agents in California raises new concerns about the existence of Al-Qaeda training camps inside Pakistan, according to a special report for the US and Pakistan.

Citing an FBI affidavit, the report showed in a news channel accused opposition Muttaheda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) leader Fazlur Rehman of running an Al-Qaeda camp near Rawalpindi. It said that Rehman is a fundamentalist, and is known for his close ties to Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban regime.

Authorities in the United States and in Pakistan are investigating whether the opposition leader is the same man identified by the Al-Qaeda suspects.

According to an FBI affidavit, one of the suspects, Hamid Hayat, 22, admitted he had trained at an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan for six months in 2003 and 2004 where he others were trained on “how to kill Americans,” an FBI agent stated in an affidavit.

Hamid’s father, Umar, 47, who drives an ice cream truck, acknowledged paying for his son’s flight and giving him a $100 a month stipend knowing he was going to a “jihadi training camp,” according to the affidavit.

Hamid was arrested upon returning to the United States from Pakistan late last month.

Videotapes shown in the course of the report contain the only known images of Al-Qaeda training camps inside Pakistan.

The tape shows fighters conducting a variety of exercises with automatic weapons, as they once did at similar camps in Afghanistan. The fighters are identified as coming from nine different countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Earlier this year, President Pervez Musharraf said that Pakistan Army had attacked and shut down such remote Al-Qaeda sanctuaries. ‘They are now on the run in the mountains, in small groups,’ said the president.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri said in Washington on Friday his country had not been contacted by the US government regarding claims by the man with suspected Al-Qaeda ties that he was trained at an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan.

“Our government has not been contacted,” Kasuri told reporters after meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for more than an hour.

“And if we are contacted, it goes without saying that we will provide cooperation,” he added. Pakistan on Thursday denied that there were any Al-Qaeda training camps on its soil.