A top al-Qaeda suspect arrested in Pakistan could have vital information about possible terrorist attacks on Britain, intelligence sources believe.
British security and intelligence officials are seeking information from Abu Faraj al-Libbi, believed to be number three in the al-Qaeda leadership, to find out what he knows about any operations planned against Britain or British interests abroad.
Libbi had no direct contact with al-Qaeda sympathisers in the UK, officials say. But, as the controller of a number of overseas networks, he would be in a position to know what attacks, if any, were being prepared against Britain and other Western targets.
”He masterminded operations and had oversight over funding,” an official said, describing him as ”top of the [al-Qaeda] machinery”.
MI5 and MI6 officials have yet to interrogate Libbi, preferring to leave initial questioning to the Pakistani authorities. But British anti-terrorist sources are anxious to find out as soon as possible what he knows about al-Qaeda’s networks.
The US is also keen to question him.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Libbi, a Libyan, was still in Pakistani custody and would not be handed over to the United States quickly.
It quoted the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, as saying: ”Until all the issues are cleared, there is no question of him being handed over to anyone else. Anything relevant to American security is being shared.”
Libbi is suspected of planning two assassination attempts on Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf, and a plot to kill its Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz.
A number of arrests followed the seizure of Libbi near Peshawar, the capital of the country’s North-West Frontier Province, which was announced 10 days ago. Pakistani officials said the army had stepped up the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Kasuri said Bin Laden was probably continually moving among the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan — and was not with a large group of people, ”otherwise he’d be detected”.
US President George Bush described Libbi as ”a major facilitator and a chief planner” for Bin Laden and said his arrest removed a ”dangerous enemy”.
There have been reports from Pakistan that he has not provided significant information during interrogations, during which he came under ”physical pressure”.
Intelligence officials say Libbi had taken over from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be a mastermind behind the September 11 attacks in the US, who was arrested in Rawalpindi in March 2003.
Sheikh Mohammed was the head of al-Qaeda’s ”military committee”, in charge of operations and recruiting overseas fighters. He is believed to have been behind the kidnap and murder of the US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002, and a suicide bomb attack on a Tunisian synagogue in which 21 people died.
He is understood to have referred under questioning to two Britons, at least one of whom has been arrested. Officials say he was particularly interested in the UK.
Though officials say Libbi had no known direct link with Britain, given his importance as successor to Sheikh Mohammed they believe he must have significant information to divulge.
Protests spread across the Muslim world from Gaza to Indonesia on Friday over a report that US interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had desecrated the Qur’an.
In Afghanistan, at least nine people were killed in protests following the Newsweek report, bringing the country’s death toll to 16 this week.
Meanwhile, a US soldier convicted of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison told a court martial that he had attached wires to the hands of a prisoner who thought he could be electrocuted as a ”joking type of thing”. – Guardian Unlimited Â