ISLAMABAD, 4 March 2003 — Suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was in US custody yesterday, a US official said, and was expected to be questioned on details of planned Al-Qaeda attacks after his weekend capture.
Mohammed’s interrogators would also be hoping for leads to the world’s most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden, analysts said, as Mohammed spent a third day in custody.
The US official told Reuters in Washington that Mohammed had been taken out of Pakistan to an undisclosed location for interrogation after his capture with two other Al-Qaeda suspects. Mohammed was solely in US custody, the official said.
Pakistani Interior Minister Faisel Saleh Hayat and presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi had earlier insisted Mohammed was still in Pakistan, being jointly interrogated by Pakistani and US agents.
Hayat told reporters one of the men arrested with Mohammed, previously identified by an intelligence source as an Egyptian, was Somali, but gave no other details.
A Pakistani, Ahmed Quddus, was also arrested in the raid. Military sources said a fourth man, an army major related to Quddus, was detained for questioning about his links to the arrested men.
Ahmed’s sister Qudsia Khanum told reporters the major, their brother Adil, had not been allowed to leave the northwestern town of Kohat, but had not been arrested.
State-run Pakistan Television quoted Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed as telling reporters Mohammed was traced through an intercept of a satellite phone call he made from the western city of Quetta, where another Al-Qaeda suspect was detained in mid-February.
Analysts said interrogators would aim to extract information from Mohammed on planned Al-Qaeda attacks which prompted recent security alerts in Europe and the United States, as well as the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda leader Bin Laden.
“The need is to forestall any possible attacks in Europe and the US which were being organized by Mohammed,” said author and political analyst Ahmed Rashid, an expert on Al-Qaeda and its Taleban allies in Afghanistan.
“There have been alerts recently and these were probably related to attacks in the planning stages by Mohammed,” he said.
“This is the major business,” Rashid said, adding that Al-Qaeda cells planning such attacks would probably have started to scatter after learning of Mohammed’s arrest.
Security analyst Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier, told Reuters he believed interrogators would use torture to get information. “I would be surprised if they don’t,” he said.
Qadir said Kuwati-born Mohammed’s arrest was likely to lead to more arrests, but not necessarily to Bin Laden. “I am sure they will interrogate him about where Osama is, but I am sure he does not know,” he said.
Amin Saikal, head of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, said Bin Laden would probably have fled soon after Mohammed’s arrest was announced.
“This is an opportunity for Osama Bin Laden to move on. If the US is certain he is still alive and want to capture him then they should not have announced his arrest.”
The White House said yesterday President George W. Bush had expressed his “deep appreciation and gratitude” to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for Mohammed’s capture. “This is a very serious development, a blow to Al-Qaeda,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
The chairman of the US House of Representatives intelligence committee, Porter Goss, said it would result in “other very successful activities soon” and suggested US operatives were already acting on information seized when Mohammed was arrested.
