Pakistan arrests two more terror suspects
Pakistan has arrested two high-level al-Qaida terrorists of African origin, one with a multimillion dollar US bounty on his head, in a widening a sweep against al-Qaida’s vast web of operatives.
Officials said the suspects are believed to be linked to a militant already in custody who provided crucial intelligence leading to the arrest of a top fugitive last week and to Washington’s issuing a warning on Sunday of terror threats to US financial institutions.
Pakistan’s interior minister said yesterday that the arrest of the two high-ranking targets in eastern Punjab province was a major breakthrough only days after intelligence agents caught Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the Tanzanian sought by US officials for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
“In addition to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, whose bounty was $25m (€20.7m), we have captured another most-wanted suspect with a bounty on him running into the millions of dollars,” Faisal Saleh Hayyat told reporters in the capital.
Pakistani officials earlier announced the arrests of six al-Qaida suspects over the past two weeks, but it was unclear if the two arrests announced by the interior minister were among that group.
They included a man officials said was Nigerian and was carrying suspicious documents when seized trying to fly out of the country. They also included a policeman accused of passing information to al-Qaida militants, a Syrian arrested at a bus stop and two additional Pakistanis and a foreigner arrested in a sports utility vehicle.
Four Egyptians and a Libyan on the FBI’s list of 22 most-wanted terrorists are believed to be in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, is from Egypt. He and the al-Qaida chief are believed to be hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border, far from Punjab province.
The arrests have come with stunning swiftness since the capture in Karachi on July 13 of an al-Qaida computer expert identified as Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was allegedly sending coded e-mails to other operatives.
An intelligence official said Khan led authorities to Ghailani, who was captured after a 12-hour gunbattle in the eastern city of Gujrat.
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