Intelligence agents and dozens of police commandos captured a suspected senior al-Qaida leader in a raid on a home in Faisalabad, an official said today. The police official would not identify the suspect or give his nationality, but said a reward had been offered for his arrest and he came from an Arab country.
| Neither of which surprises me in the least... |
Interior Ministry officials in Islamabad, the capital, were not immediately available to confirm the arrest. FBI agents were not involved in the operation, unlike in previous arrests of top al-Qaida suspects in Pakistan, said the official. Intelligence agents climbed over a perimeter wall of the house and led out the blindfolded suspect. They drove away in a jeep with black tinted windows to an unknown destination. An assault rifle, a revolver and a suitcase were seized in the raid.
| Travelling light, was he? |
Authorities had expected to capture about a half dozen people, but only one was taken from the house, said the official, who did not say how much reward had been posted for the suspect.
And a bit more, also from Dawn...
The arrest took place in a raid in Faisalabad on information gleaned from interrogation of three Al Qaeda suspects, two of them Yemeni nationals, arrested in Faisalabad on Tuesday. The three had fled from a tribal area bordering Afghanistan after Pakistan army swooped on Al Qaeda suspects on Oct 2 killing at least eight suspected militants and arresting 18. Intelligence officials have said they are trying to track down an Egyptian-born Canadian, Ahmed Said Khadr, alias Abur Abdur Rehman, a suspected Al Qaeda financier who escaped the military operation near the Afghan border town of Angor Adda. |