| MadMax |
Posted
on 15-Mar-03 04:46 PM
Pakistan Arrests Alleged al-Qaida Member
2 hours, 26 minutes ago
By ASIF SHAHZAD, Associated Press Writer
LAHORE, Pakistan - Pakistani agents aided by the FBI (news - web sites) arrested a suspected senior al-Qaida operative Saturday in the eastern city of Lahore, a government official said.
The suspect, Yassir al-Jaziri, is among the top seven alleged terrorists wanted by the United States, Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press. He is not on the FBI's most-wanted list.
Al-Jaziri's name surfaced last month at a court hearing in Lahore for Ahmed Javed Khawaja, a naturalized American doctor, who is in police custody for alleged ties to al-Qaida.
Court documents describe Al-Jaziri as an Algerian-Moroccan dual national responsible for al-Qaida's business interests. But it was not immediately known where al-Jaziri stands in the hierarchy of the al-Qaida network, led by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
"Al-Jaziri is definitely an important al-Qaida leader and this is all I can say at this point," Interior Ministry secretary Tasneem Noorani told the AP. "We understand that he is among those al-Qaida leaders wanted by the United States."
Intelligence sources said a number of documents were found at the home where al-Jaziri was arrested, as well as a computer and compact discs. It wasn't immediately known what was on the discs.
FBI agents helped Pakistani security agents catch al-Jaziri, Noorani said, though the nature of that assistance was not immediately clear.
Al-Jaziri was arrested in the Lahore neighborhood of Gulburg, Ahmed said. The Pakistani family he had been staying with was being interrogated, but Ahmed said they were not under arrest.
The arrest was the second seizure of an alleged top al-Qaida member in recent weeks.
The group's suspected No. 3 man, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was arrested March 1 in Rawalpindi, near the federal capital of Islamabad.
Ahmed told The AP that information garnered from Mohammed led to the arrest of al-Jaziri.
That arrest led to a manhunt for bin Laden and other sought terrorists in Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border and in the mountains of eastern and southwestern Afghanistan (news - web sites).
Mohammed is believed to have been the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks and was the most significant al-Qaida arrest since the war on terror started in October 2001.
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