Posted on 08/19/2004 8:47:24 AM PDT by knighthawk
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan Wednesday announced rewards totalling 1.1 million dollars for information on six wanted terror suspects including Al-Qaeda's Libyan planner Abu Faraj Farj, described by Pakistani intelligence as the new number three in Osama bin Laden's network.
The government placed photos of the six on the front pages of major newspapers, offering rewards of 20 million rupees (345,000 dollars) each for Faraj and Pakistani militant Amjad Hussain Farooqi.
Bounties of 10 million to five million rupees (172,000 to 86,000 dollars) each were offered for four other Pakistani suspects.
All six are Al-Qaeda suspects believed to have played a role in two December attempts to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf.
The Libyan, listed in the advertisement as Abu Faraj Al Libbi alias Dr Taufeeq, ranks number three in Al-Qaeda's new generation of operatives, replacing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was captured in March 2003, according to a senior Pakistani security official.
"This Libyan ranks third in the current Al-Qaeda hierarchy after Osama bin Laden and his (Egyptian) deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri," the official told AFP.
"Faraj heads the international operational wing of Al-Qaeda, with the help of an Egyptian accomplice Abu Hamza Rabia," he said. "Faraj is the man who has been masterminding and organizing terror strikes in Pakistan and we looking for him desperately." He said both men were believed to be still hiding somewhere inside Pakistan and their capture would "deal a telling blow to the network."
A U.S. Central Intelligence Agency list of most wanted terror suspects offers a bounty of five million dollars for both Rabia and Faraj, the Pakistani official said.
Rabia is ranked number eight in Al-Qaeda's hierarcy, according to the official. He could not say who held the rankings in between Faraj and Rabia.
Both men were believed to be still hiding somewhere in Pakistan, another senior security official said.
Faraj, alleged by Musharraf to be the mastermind of the December 13 and 25 attempts to kill him, has also been described as a personal assistant of bin Laden.
Farooqi, 30, was alleged to be the chief planner of the Musharraf assassination attempts.
Musharraf has said Al-Qaeda operates in a three-tier system of mastermind, planner and executor, normally recruiting local militants for the latter two roles.
Farooqi has also been indicted over the January 2002 kidnap-murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl's murder, but has never been found.
Security officials say Farooqi is an important link between Al-Qaeda and fighters from dozens of local Islamic militant groups.
He is an "extremely intelligent and elusive terrorist operative," an intelligence official who has interrogated detained accomplices of Farooqi told AFP.
Farooqi recruited the trio of unidentified men who slit Pearl's throat as a video-camera filmed, the official said.
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