ISLAMABAD, 6 May 2005 — Pakistani security officials said yesterday they hoped the capture of a Libyan accused of being Al-Qaeda’s No. 3 and planning to kill President Pervez Musharraf could lead them to Osama Bin Laden.
Intelligence agents said they had separately recaptured an air force officer who escaped jail late last year after being sentenced to death in one of the assassination plots masterminded by the top terror suspect Abu Farraj Al-Libbi.
In another apparent coup, officials said a second militant seized on Monday with Al-Libbi, who has a five-million-dollar US bounty on his head, was himself a key Al-Qaeda figure with a reward tag of four million dollars.
However they would not name the other terror suspect, saying it could harm efforts by Pakistani interrogators to extract information from Al-Libbi about Bin Laden.
“The man arrested with Al-Libbi is an important Al-Qaeda operative, but we cannot disclose his name. We understand the bounty on his head is four million dollars,” a senior government official said. The official declined to give any other details.
There were varying reports on the way Al-Libbi was arrested. Security agents disguised in burqas, the all-covering garments worn by women, seized Al-Libbi and the other suspect on Monday after a shootout in Mardan, 120 kilometers (74 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
He was flown by helicopter to Islamabad and was being held in custody at an undisclosed location, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said.
Al-Libbi was also Pakistan’s most wanted man and could face the death penalty for the two Musharraf assassination attempts in December 2003, which the president has personally accused him of masterminding.
Junior air force official Mushtaq Ahmed, 26, was sentenced to death in November for his role in the bombing of a bridge which collapsed moments after Musharraf’s convoy had passed through in December 2003.
He escaped jail soon afterward but was arrested last week on a bus near Islamabad on a tip off despite having changed his appearance by shaving off his beard, a security official said.
Officials said they were not aware of any link between Ahmed’s recapture and the arrest of Al-Libbi.
Al-Libbi took over Al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan after the arrest in March 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the key planner of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and the network’s former third in command, officials said.
US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have hailed Al-Libbi’s arrest as a major victory in the war on terrorism.
“He was the man who was heading the cell that plotted attacks on Britain and the United States before the US election last November,” another senior security official said.
The Libyan and an associate were riding on a motorbike from a nearby hideout in Mardan, which had earlier been raided, to another when security officials in a Suzuki car stopped them at gunpoint, a witness said.
The pillion rider, believed to be Al-Libbi, opened fire and escaped, taking shelter in a nearby house.
However the owner of the two-room house, Khalid Khan, said that several security men, some of whom disguised in burqas, fired teargas shells into the house and whisked him away.
A copy of a classified US Central Intelligence Agency list put Al-Libbi at No. 3 in the Al-Qaeda hierarchy after Bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
It says he has a five-million-dollar bounty on his head and goes on to describe him as “senior Al-Qaeda operations commander and personal assistant of Bin Laden.”
“Al-Libbi is one of Bin Laden’s closest confidants and he should be able to provide new leads about both Osama and Al-Zawahiri,” another security official involved in anti-Al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan said on condition of anonymity.
The capture of Al-Libbi is the latest in a string of key arrests by Pakistan.
US security officials said they had supplied information that helped track Al-Libbi down, but the White House emphasized that Pakistan took the lead in the arrest.
The other version of the arrest was that the Central Intelligence Agency had been monitoring Al-Libbi’s movements since February, and orders for the arrest came when it seemed the risk of losing him outweighed the chance of him leading agents to Bin Laden or Al-Zawahri.
Al-Libbi was caught along with four comrades on Monday morning, said Amanullah Khan, deputy superintendent of police in Mardan.
Intelligence sources say the militants had been hiding at a shrine on Mardan’s outskirts when they were first discovered, but police and security forces cornered them when they fled to a nearby house.
Khan said tear gas was used to force the men out after they refused to surrender.
“We tried for half-an-hour to 45 minutes but he remained quiet,” Khan said. “We tried to break down the door but it was bolted from inside. So, we broke windows and threw a tear gas grenade inside.
“He came out unarmed with hands in the air and his head slightly bowed. We found a cell phone on him. He was immediately whisked away by the intelligence agency.”
And after catching Al-Libbi, security forces closed the net on other suspects with several raids elsewhere in the country. In other swoops in Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province, and the Bajaur tribal area of the NWFP had already netted more than 20 other Al Qaeda suspects, officials said.
“In one raid last night, in Lahore, six men and two women were arrested,” the official said, adding that automatic rifles and more than three dozen hand grenades were seized.
