Washington | Tuesday
NEARLY 150 suspected terrorists and their supporters have been taken into custody in 25 different countries, as a US-led worldwide campaign against terror gathered steam, US President George W Bush announced on Monday.
”We’re finding out members of the al-Qaeda organisation, who they are, where they think they can hide, and we’re slowly but surely bringing them to justice,” he said. The FBI has arrested or detained 480 individuals as part of its investigation of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington that have left about 5,700 people dead or missing.
Bush, for his part, announced the arrest abroad of Zayd Hassan Abd Al-Latif Masud Al-Safarini, the man believed to be behind a 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am flight in Pakistan, which left two Americans dead.
He pointed out, however, that Al-Safarini had no known ties to al-Qaeda, the network led by Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, which the Americans believe to be behind the attacks.
But as US investigators pursued 238 000 leads received since the attacks, their attention increasingly shifted overseas, where the hijackers of US passenger planes used to ram the buildings are believed to have hatched their plot.
Law enforcement and intelligence officials looked into reports on Monday that two days before the strikes, three of the suspected hijackers –Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Waleed al-Shehri — each wired $5 000 to a Saudi man in the United Arab Emirates, who, upon receipt of the money, quickly left for Pakistan, according to law enforcement officials.
The transfers, made through Western Union outlets in Laurel, Maryland, apparently represented leftover money from preparations for the terrorist attacks and were addressed to Mustafa Ahmad, a long-time bin Laden associate, the sources said.
Meanwhile, according to unconfirmed reports Monday, the US government probe may be closing in on bin Laden, whom Bush has named as ”the prime suspect” in the attacks. According to NBC News, bin Laden called his mother on the phone two days before the attacks, telling her, ”In two days you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while.”
While the bin Laden family has formally disowned Osama bin Laden, his mother, Al-Kalifa bin Laden, is believed to have maintained ties with her son, the report said.
Asked about the report, Justice Department representative Dan Nelson said: ”I can’t discuss this.”
Meanwhile, Bush said investigators following the terrorist money trail had succeeded in finding and freezing six million dollars in bank accounts linked to terrorist activity.
”We’ve frozen 30 al-Qaeda accounts in the United States and 20 overseas, and we’re just beginning,” the president said.
In Germany, police have begun questioning up to 20 students at Hamburg-Harburg Technical University with profiles similar to the hijackers. German investigators were also sweeping computer databases in search of suspects, according to local media reports.
In Bosnia, a representative for NATO-led peacekeepers said four people arrested there last week were ”suspected of involvement with support for terrorist activities” and will remain in custody.
The Bosnian weekly Ljiljan identified two of them Abd-Elhalima Khafagia of Egypt and Jehad Ahmad El-Jamala of Jordan.
Meanwhile, European investigators searched for 14 Afghan-trained jet pilots who have served in the Taliban air force or have ties to bin Laden, Fox News Channel reported.
The men, who included Pakistani, Afghan and various Middle Eastern nationals, may be travelling on false US passports, the report said.
Manufacturing false documents for some of the alleged hijackers was the charge read to two immigrants from Latin America, who appeared in a Virginia court Monday.
They were identified as Luis Martinez-Flores and Kenys Galicia. Meanwhile, the Taliban regime are bracing for battle after news that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington’s closest ally, was expected to unveil plans on Tuesday of a US-led military assault against them.
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Afghanistan’s southern neighbour and the only country left that officially recognises the Taliban, also warned it looked as if the Taliban’s days were numbered.
– Sapa-AFP