A top al Qaeda operative, one of the world's most wanted men with a multi-million-dollar price on his head, is resisting questioning by Pakistani interrogators seeking clues to the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, officials said on Friday. Investigators are scouring a computer and several disks seized when they captured Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and 13 others after a 14-hour gunbattle with security forces at the weekend in the city of Gujarat, 110 miles southeast of Islamabad, intelligence sources told Reuters on Friday.
| Goody, another hard drive to suck dry of info. |
The suspects were being interrogated in the eastern city of Lahore. But Ghailani, born in Zanzibar in Tanzania and wanted by the United States for his role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people, had given little away, one intelligence source said. "He is still tight-lipped," the official said.
| "Ahmed, the #4 truncheon, please." |
| "Here you are, sir! And might I suggest the red underwear with the black trim?" |
Ghailani was captured along with his Uzbek wife and two South Africans after his driver led police to his hide-out, the intelligence source said. Among those found in the house were three women and five children.
| More "South Africans", huh? |
| Any of them have an Afrikaaner accent? |
Ghailani had brought two other foreign comrades to his safe house after the group became nervous that security forces were closing in on the hotel in Gujarat where they had been staying, the intelligence source said. Security forces were now searching for the Pakistani who rented the house for Ghailani.
| Five bucks sez the landlord's a JI member... |
"It is a big achievement for our security forces," Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said. Ghailani and his companions had spent time in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban and were preparing to flee Pakistan along with their families, using fake travel papers, when the authorities caught up with them, a ministry official said.
| Is there any other kind in Pakistan? |
"We're gettin' out o' Pakistan! It's too hot for us here!"
"Where will we go, Foopie?"
"Yemen, by Allan! There's a Shiite preacher there that'll take us in! Nobody would think of looking for us with him!" |
Pakistan had not yet received a request from the United States for Ghailani's extradition, Hayat said. "He has been in Pakistan for some time. We have to establish the exact nature of his activities and scope of his network in Pakistan. Only after we have exhausted our inquiries shall we be able to hand him over ... to the U.S.," he said.
| They have ways of making him talk |
Additional: He said Ghailani has given authorities some useful information. Hayyat would not speculate on whether the suspect was planning any attacks in the United States or Pakistan. "It would be premature to say anything about this, but obviously we have certain information, some very valuable and useful leads have been acquired," he said. Ghailani was being interrogated by Pakistani intelligence at an undisclosed location, an intelligence official familiar with the questioning said. "These people are so well trained that they often give false information, and they keep changing their statement," he said on condition his name not be used. He said Ghailani had been silent at first, but that he had eventually yielded to incessant beating questioning. "He initially resisted, but our people were able to get a lot of information from him," said the official.
| "No! Not the crotchless underwear! I'll talk! I'll talk!" |
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