Abu Farraj al-Libbi, a senior al-Qaeda suspect wanted in two attempts to assassinate President General Pervez Musharraf, has been arrested in Pakistan, the government said on Wednesday.
Al-Libbi, a native of Libya who authorities say is a close associate of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and acted as al-Qaeda’s operational chief in Pakistan, was arrested earlier this week, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said.
”This is a very important day for us,” Ahmed said. He would provide no details on where al-Libbi was captured, or where he is being held. Ahmed said the Pakistani government had been offering a $1-million reward for information leading to al-Libbi’s capture, though it was not immediately clear if it would be paid.
Officials said earlier on Wednesday that they were questioning two foreigners on suspicion of links with al-Qaeda.
Two security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the suspects were captured after a shootout on Monday in Mardan, about 50km north of Peshawar, capital of the deeply conservative North West Frontier province.
”They are in the custody of a Pakistani intelligence agency,” one official said. He declined to give more details, including the suspects’ nationalities. It was not clear who the second suspect was.
Before Ahmed’s announcement, senior government and military officials on Wednesday repeatedly denied rumours that they had al-Libbi in custody.
Al-Libbi is accused of masterminding two bombings against Musharraf in December 2003. The military leader escaped injury but 17 others were killed in one of the attacks.
He is accused of taking over as al-Qaeda’s operational chief in Pakistan after the March 1 2003 arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the terror network’s alleged number three. Mohammed was later handed over to United States custody, and his whereabouts are unknown.
Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, named the Libyan as the chief suspect in the bombings against him. He was among six suspects identified as Pakistan’s ”most wanted terrorists” in a poster campaign last year.
In the poster, he appeared in a photo as a dapper man with a short beard, wearing a Western suit and tie. The other suspects were all Pakistanis, linked to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni Muslim militant group believed tied to al-Qaeda.
Al-Libbi is not on the FBI’s list of the globe’s most wanted terrorists.
One of the suspects, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, was killed in a shootout with security forces in southern Pakistan in September.
Farooqi, a senior member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was accused of plotting the bombings against Musharraf with al-Libbi and of involvement in the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002.
Pakistan has arrested hundreds of terror suspects since Musharraf ended the country’s support of the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan after the September 11 2001 attacks on the US, and waged bloody operations against al-Qaeda-linked militants along the Afghan border.
It has handed over about 700 al-Qaeda suspects to the US, including Mohammed, September 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh and al-Qaeda senior operative Abu Zubaydah. — Sapa-AP