PAKISTANI INTELLIGENCE officers working with the CIA arrested three members of al-Qaida including a top operative believed to have been tasked by Osama bin Laden with targeting American economic interests around the world, Pakistan’s army said today.
Younis al-Mauritani’s arrest five days before the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was seen as a blow to al-Qaida’s central leadership in Pakistan, further degrading its ability to mount terrorist attacks abroad. The terrorist organisation has seen its senior ranks thinned since Osama bin Laden was killed 2 May along with Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s No2, in a CIA missile strike last month.
The public announcement of close cooperation with the CIA appeared aimed at reversing the widespread perception that ties between US intelligence and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency had been badly damaged by the US killing of bin Laden inside Pakistan.
The Pakistani military said the arrests took place near the Afghan border in the southwestern city of Quetta, long known as a base for militants. It did not say when.
The capture of an al-Qaida militant inside Pakistan has become rare in recent years: most targets of CIA operations in the country have been killed by drone aircraft in a relentless series of operations launched in 2008.
“This operation was planned and conducted with technical assistance of United State Intelligence Agencies with whom Inter-Services Intelligence has a strong, historic intelligence relationship. Both Pakistan and United States Intelligence agencies continue to work closely together to enhance security of their respective nations,” the military said in a written statement.
The statement said al-Mauritani was mainly responsible for al-Qaida’s international operations and was tasked by bin Laden with hitting targets of economic importance in America, Europe and Australia. It said he was planning to target US economic interests including gas and oil pipelines, power generating dams and oil tankers by using explosive-laden speed boats in international waters.
It named the other two detainees as Abdul-Ghaffar al-Shami and Messara al-Shami.
US officials were not immediately available for comment. The US has said it doesn’t know of any specific al-Qaida plot to attack the US ahead of 11 September.
Since the 2001, attacks, Pakistan’s spy agency has cooperated with the CIA to arrest scores of al-Qaida suspects, most of whom were handed over to the United States.
Many top al-Qaida commanders are still believed to live in Pakistan, and getting Islamabad’s cooperation in cracking down on the network has been a top American goal since 2001. But there have been persistent suspicions that the country was protecting militants. The fact that bin Laden was killed in an army town close to the capital, Islamabad, led to fresh doubts over Pakistan’s commitment.
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