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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Ul-Misri's an explosives expert who stayed in Iran |
| 2004-09-02 |
| An Egyptian al Qaeda operative arrested this week in southwestern Pakistan is an explosives expert who spent time in Iran after the September 11 attacks, officials said Thursday. Abdul Sattar Sharif ul Misri was arrested Monday with a Saudi suspect, Abdul Hakeem, in Quetta, capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan. "All we know about him is that he was an expert in explosives and he used to train people how to handle these explosives," military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said. He did not say whether the suspect was planning any attacks in Pakistan. An intelligence official, who did not want to be identified, said ul Misri had lived in Afghanistan until the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, when he fled to Iran. "He used to visit Pakistan from Iran occasionally. His family still lives in Iran," the official said. Ul Misri and Hakeem were captured in a rented house owned by an Afghan in a poor neighborhood of Quetta, where many Afghan refugees also live. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed has described the pair as "important people" and has said ul Misri had a price on his head. Ul Misri means "the Egyptian" in Arabic. Tuesday, security forces arrested another al Qaeda suspect at a religious school run by a senior Islamist politician. But government officials said Hafiz Abdul Khaliq was released after a brief interrogation. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |