ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Monday rejected reports that wanted Al Qaeda militant Matiur Rehman had been arrested and denied that he was linked to an alleged plot to blow up US-bound airliners. ABC News reported last week quoting unnamed intelligence sources that Rehman, who is also wanted in a December 25, 2003 attack on President Pervez Musharraf, was arrested from central Pakistan. The news channel and some newspapers have linked Rehman to an ongoing probe into the alleged conspiracy to bomb transatlantic jets flying from Britain and said Rehman was the key in the plot.
“It is totally baseless,” foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told AFP. “It is a fictitious story. Matiur Rehman has not been arrested, we are still looking for him,” she said. “He is not linked” to the airline plot, she added. | Methinks the lady douth protest too much |
Pakistani agents earlier this month seized Briton Rashid Rauf in Bawahalpur in southern Punjab province, saying he was a “key man” in the airliner plot with links to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Security officials have said a Middle Eastern Al Qaeda operative suspected of masterminding the scheme is in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province bordering Pakistan.
Rehman, 32, who comes from from Bahawalpur, tops the Pakistani security agenciesÂ’ most wanted list and carries a bounty of 10 million rupees (166,666 dollars). He is also wanted for the bombing of the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi in 2002. Rehman is said to be a member of Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, a group which formed the core of the gang that kidnapped US reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002, and to have links with the anti-Shiite outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Officials say he took over from Amjad Farooqi -- one of the leaders of the Pearl gang who was killed by police in 2004 -- as the chief Pakistani facilitator for Al Qaeda in Pakistan. He was a close associate of former Al Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Libbi before the Libyan was arrested in northwestern Pakistan in 2005. | Either; 1. They ain't got him, 2. They've already put him on the CIA 'Ghost Plane', 3. Keeping his capture quiet until he gives up more of al-Qaeda or 4. They got him, but he knows too much to let us question him. |
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