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| Caribbean-Latin America | |
| Chavez official accused of hiding 3/11 mastermind | |
| 2005-11-04 | |
A Syrian man believed to be a key figure in Osama bin Laden's terrorist network in Europe may have been captured by Pakistani security agencies, officials said today. Officials speaking anonymously in Pakistan said today that they were trying to find out whether one of two arrested al-Qaida suspects was Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, alleged to have had a key role in the Madrid train bombings and to be linked with the July 7 attack on London. Nasar, a 47-year-old Syrian, has been accused by prosecutors in Spain of having a key role in masterminding the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, which killed 191 people. He lived in London from 1995 to 1998 and there have been claims that he could have been involved in setting up a "sleeper cell" in the capital. Several of Nasar's co-accused over the Madrid bombings have links with the UK. The two suspects were arrested this week during a raid on a house in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's south-west Baluchistan province, according to three Pakistani intelligence officials. They were detained after a gun battle with security forces, during which a third suspect was shot dead. Pakistani officials have not yet confirmed that Nasar, who has joint Spanish nationality, is one of the detained men. "I can only confirm that there was an encounter, and our security forces arrested one suspected al-Qaida terrorist while another terrorist was killed," the country's information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, told the Associated Press. A Pakistani security source said the second suspect was a Pakistani from Jaish-i-Mohammed, a local Islamic militant group allegedly linked to al-Qaida. Nasar was described by the chief prosecutor in the Madrid bombings case as a suspect in the "initiation, preparation and carrying out" of the attacks. Tall, red-haired, pale-skinned and green-eyed, he has been able to travel without raising suspicion, according to Spanish police. Nasar's name has been widely mentioned in reports citing security officials speaking about the investigation into the July 7 bombings, in which 52 people were murdered on the capital's transport system. The four suicide bombers were three British born men of Pakistani descent from West Yorkshire and one Jamaican-born British national. However, investigators have been investigating whether an al-Qaida mastermind may have had a planning role in the attacks. Early reports suggested the police thought there was no direct link to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida "hardcore". However a firmer link with the terror group was suspected after a tape emerged in September of the suspected ringleader of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, which also featured al-Qaida No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri. The US justice department's Rewards for Justice website describes Nasar as an al-Qaida member and former trainer at terrorist camps in Afghanistan who helped train extremists in using poisons and chemicals. It also says he is likely to be in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Immediately after the London attacks there were reports he could be in Iraq. Last year, the US government announced a $5m (£2.8m) reward for information leading to the capture of Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri. In September 2003, he was among 35 people named in an indictment handed down by a Spanish magistrate for terrorist activities connected to al-Qaida, and was alleged to have close ties with the suspected leader of the terror group's cell in Spain, a Syrian-born Spaniard named Imad Yarkas. The last reported arrest of a suspected key al-Qaida figure in Pakistan was in May, when Abu Farraj al-Libbi, the alleged mastermind of assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf, was caught after a gun battle in a north-western town. He was later handed over to the US. | |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #2 HF, you forgot Chirac. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2005-11-04 10:21 |
| #1 Is he occused or accused? Just being a pain in the rear ... speaking of PIAs: Chavez, Castro, and Carter, the 3 Cs of venality and banality. |
| Posted by: The Happy Fliegerabwehrkanonen 2005-11-04 09:49 |