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Haroon Rashid is a major catch?
The Pakistani police have arrested a major al-Qaeda figure who has suspected close links to the London bombers, according to The Times newspaper. According to the British daily, a senior Pakistani official said that the al-Qaeda figure who is a Pakistani was arrested during raids in Lahore and Karachi and was under interrogation over his alleged role in the 7 July attacks in London. The Pakistani authorities have denied the report.

"We suspect two or three of the detained [from Lahore] had links with the bombers, but one in particular, who is a major figure in al-Qaeda. We are interrogating them intensively," the official told The Times.

On Wednesday, Pakistani security officials denied the Times report saying that they had made no such arrest in Pakistan.

The authorities in the UK have said that the simultaneous bomb blasts that were carried out on the London transport system "bore the hallmarks" of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Three of those believed to have carried out the attacks have been identified by the police as British-born Muslim men of Pakistani origin who all made recent trips to Pakistan. The police are trying to determine who they met during their visit. The fourth bomber is believed to be a Jamaican-born Muslim convert. The July 7 attacks in London left at least 56 killed and another 700 injured.

In Pakistan, at least 139 people were arrested in the country-wide raids on hardline Islamists on Tuesday night that were conducted in the Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan as well as Quetta and Islamabad.

According to the police, among those arrested were suspected members of banned organisations such as Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Jaish-i-Mohammad, Harkatul Mujahideen and Hizbul Tehrir.

The arrests come as Pakistan's foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri travels to London for talks.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-07-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=124527