Posted on 03/10/2003 8:48:14 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
PAKISTAN’S military intelligence agency claimed yesterday that it was closer to capturing Osama bin Laden as a result of information obtained from Sheikh Khalid Mohammed and two other senior al-Qaeda leaders arrested this month.
In an unprecedented briefing to foreign journalists, the secretive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) also showed a videotape of the pre-dawn raid on March 1 that netted Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, the alleged financier of the attacks.
They also showed clips from a separate video of Mohammed’s interrogation.
A senior ISI officer said Mohammed had admitted meeting bin Laden in December, but did not disclose where the encounter took place.
Hawsawi and Mohammed Omar Abdel Rahman, the third man arrested in the dawn raid, had also met bin Laden, the ISI officer said. Rahman is the son of Abdur Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was convicted in the United States in 1995 for planning terrorist attacks in New York.
“The information obtained from them is bringing us significantly closer to bin Laden,” the ISI officer said.
According to the officer, Mohammed broke his silence after three days of questioning, although some of his evidence had proved contradictory. He said that the investigators had seized useful documents from the house where the al-Qaeda leaders were arrested.
Mohammed and Hawsawi were arrested on March 1 in a raid on a house in Rawalpindi’s upmarket Westridge district.
The house belonged to a microbiologist whose wife is a local leader of Jamaat-i Islami, Pakistan’s most powerful and politically influential Islamic organisation. Also captured was their son, Abdul Qadoos, who is also associated with the party. The ISI officer said that Jamaat and al-Qaeda were not linked, but added: “There are individual associations.”
The group is a key partner in the five-party radical Islamic alliance that rules the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan.
The arrest of Mohammed is being seen as the biggest coup in the War on Terror.
Pakistani and American special forces have launched a massive manhunt for bin Laden in southwestern Baluchistan province and across the border in Afghanistan since the arrest of the al-Qaeda men. Pakistani officials believe that the area may be the latest hideout of bin Laden.
One Pakistani official claimed last week that two sons of bin Laden were arrested after a shoot-out with American forces inside the Afghan border. The report was later denied by Pakistani and American officials.
Well, maybe. But KSM has been in captivity about a week and a half now (at least that's publicly admitted), and with each passing day I'd say it's more likely OBL's trail grows cold. I wish the media would let go of this OBL fascination and report all the successes our folks are having in the war on terror.
Then it sounds like you agree. ??
and with each passing day I'd say it's more likely OBL's trail grows cold.
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