ISLAMABAD, 2 May 2003 — Investigators were interrogating six members of an Al-Qaeda cell yesterday and expected to glean information that would lead to the arrest of more members of the militant group, officials said.
The six, including a Yemeni believed to have been involved in the attack on the US warship Cole in Yemen in 2000, were arrested in a raid in Karachi on Tuesday when authorities also seized a big haul of explosives and weapons.
“They are being investigated and we expect more arrests,” said a senior Pakistani official who declined to be identified.
The six include Yemeni national Waleed Muhammad Bin Attash, alias Khalid Al-Attash, suspected of involvement in the October 2000 attack on the US warship Cole in Yemen.
A suicide bomber in a small boat attacked the Cole in Aden port, killing 17 US sailors. Washington blamed the attack on Al-Qaeda, which has had many supporters in Yemen.
The government said in a statement more “revelations” were expected from the group. Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said Pakistani officials were in charge of the interrogation.
Hayat dismissed a media report suggesting Osama Bin Laden had been arrested. “What comment do you want on such rubbish reports....such reports deserve no comment,” he said.
“They are still with us. We are investigating them right now,” Brig. Javed Cheema, head of the Interior Ministry’s National Crises Management Unit, told AFP.
Paramilitary Rangers forces caught the suspected terrorists after they were tipped off that an arms consignment was arriving in Karachi, a senior Karachi-based security officer said.
“They mounted a raid and arrested three people who gave them some leads, which led to the arrest of some more people including the Yemeni,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
There was no resistance during the two raids. Among the other five suspects was a foreigner of Arab origin, while the rest appeared to be Pakistani nationals, he said.
“The US teams have not joined interrogations yet. Later they might,” he said.
US Central Intelligence Agency experts are helping Pakistan’s top spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) track down Al-Qaeda operatives hiding in the congested cities and remote western border regions neighboring Afghanistan.
The government said during the raid in which the six were caught, authorities found 150 kg of high explosives, detonators, transmitters, time switches, arms and ammunition. Authorities said the group had been planning a major attack that had been averted.
Pakistan says more than 400 members of Al-Qaeda and of Afghanistan’s former Taleban regime have been arrested in Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks, among them senior Al-Qaeda members Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.
A US intelligence official said Al-Attash was also suspected of helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks.
Another US official said Al-Attash was close to Bin Laden, was considered to be in his inner circle, and was once one of his bodyguards.
