ISLAMABAD: Pakistani security forces missed a chance to catch Al-Qaeda second in command Ayman Al-Zawahri, the government’s senior Interior Ministry official said yesterday.
Zawahri and Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden have been in hiding since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and are both believed to be in ethnic Pashtun tribal lands that straddle northwest Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Rehman Malik did not say when security forces had missed the chance to catch Zawahri or give any more detail about the incident. He also did not say where Bin Laden might be.
Malik told a news conference Zawahri was moving between Pakistan’s tribal areas and the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar and Paktia. “We certainly had traced him at one place, but we missed the chance. So he’s moving in Mohmand and, of course, sometimes in Kunar, mostly in Kunar and Paktia,” he said. Mohmand is one of seven Pakistani tribal regions where Malik said both Zawahri and his wife had been. Malik said Pakistani Taleban were working hand in glove with Al-Qaeda.
“They have not only connections, I would say Tehrik-e-Taleban is an extension of Al-Qaeda,” he said, referring to a Pakistani Taleban umbrella group which authorities blame for a string of bomb attacks over the past year that have killed hundreds of people.
