ISLAMABAD, 14 August 2004 — Pakistani authorities have detained an Indian national suspected of belonging to an Al-Qaeda-linked militant group that carried out an attack on Karachi’s army chief that killed 10 people.
As the crackdown on Osama Bin Laden’s network enters its second month, security has been stepped up in major cities ahead of Independence Day to be celebrated today, reflecting government concerns of a militant backlash.
The capture of around 30 local and foreign militants, including top Al-Qaeda operatives who knew Bin Laden, has raised expectations that Pakistan is getting closer to locating the Al-Qaeda mastermind and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahri.
But Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat was restrained when asked about the chances of finding the world’s most wanted men.
“We should be cautious, and it is very difficult to say that these (Bin Laden and Al-Zawahri) are staying somewhere in Pakistan because information we have got doesn’t suggest in any way that they are in Pakistan,” he told Geo TV.
US officials have said the leaders of Al-Qaeda are most likely to be hiding somewhere along the rugged 2,450-km Afghan-Pakistan border.
On Thursday, Maqsood Ansari, from Uttar Pradesh in northern India, was seized in Lahore, based on information from a local member of Jundullah, a militant outfit believed to have been acting on Al-Qaeda’s orders.
Pakistani intelligence officials, who did not want to be named, said Ansari fled Karachi following the June attack on Lt.-Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat which he helped coordinate. The commander survived.
Ten members of Jundullah have been captured so far, including Rao Mohammad Khalid, who was arrested in Karachi on Thursday and found in possession of weapons. Police believe there are around 20 Jundullah members.
Khalid appeared before an anti-terrorism court yesterday and was remanded in custody for 10 days.
Among those arrested since July 12 are top Al Qaeda figures, including a Tanzanian wanted for the 1998 attacks on US embassies in east Africa and a Pakistani computer engineer who revealed plots to attack the United States and Britain.
A Libyan man believed to be the head of Al-Qaeda’s terror operations is the top target of Pakistani security forces hunting key operatives of Bin Laden’s network, officials said yesterday.
Abu Faraj Farj, a former personal assistant of Bin Laden, masterminded the two December attempts to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf, said an intelligence official closely involved in the Al-Qaeda crackdown.
“Farj was a personal assistant of Bin Laden and our information is he is the current top operational chief of the network,” the official said.
“Farj heads Al-Qaeda’s clandestine operational apparatus in Pakistan and also controls Al-Qaeda’s sleeper cells in other countries to plot terror strikes.”
Farj is on the run with an Egyptian cohort, Hamza Rabia, the official said.
“We are looking for them frantically,” he said.
Farj and Rabia are on the US Central Intelligence Agency’s list of 10 most wanted terror suspects with a $5 million bounty on their heads, the official said.
Information gleaned from recently arrested key Al-Qaeda suspects has given the security agencies valuable leads as to their whereabouts, he said.
“We are very hopeful we will be able to capture the two masterminds,” he said.
Another significant dent in the terror network was made this week when security agencies seized three key Al-Qaeda operatives in Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi.
Turkish national Yilmaz Mehmat alias Khalid, Uzbek national Mansoor and Pakistani national Siddique Shah alias Mohsin, who is suspected of a key role in the bids to kill Musharraf, were arrested on Sunday and Monday.
They are the latest in a gallery of suspected top operatives of Bin Laden’s network caught in the country since mid-July.
The interior minister said security forces have taken into custody some two dozen Al-Qaeda operatives since July.
“The noose is being tightened around the network,” Hayat said.
Mohsin was “one of the important characters in the Musharraf case.”
