Pakistan smashes new Al-Qaeda plot to kill Musharraf

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani intelligence agents have foiled a new plot by Al-Qaeda militants to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf, security officials told AFP.

Seven conspirators were arrested in a number of raids in central Punjab province in late April, one week before the capture of alleged Al-Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Libbi in a northwestern region, the officials said.

"This is a spectacular achievement by Pakistan's security agency," said a top security official. "First we smashed the gang plotting a new attack on Musharraf and then a week later we netted two Arabs including al-Libbi."

The group included Mushtaq Ahmed, a junior air force official who escaped from jail late last year after being convicted of a key role in a 2003 attempt to eliminate Musharraf, and who was recaptured last week.

Military leader Musharraf, who has angered Islamic militants with his support for the US war on terror, publicly accused Libyan national al-Libbi of masterminding two previous failed attempts to assassinate him.

Officials said the plotters in the latest bid were headed by a Pakistani Al-Qaeda militant named Mohammad Arshad, who is an associate of al-Libbi.

"The group was planning a new attack on President Musharraf in Rawalpindi or Islamabad. They had assembled the explosive devices and they were to use them adopting a new method," the intelligence official said.

He did not specify exactly how or when they planned to carry out the assassination attempt.

The whole plot was revealed when security agencies arrested Mushtaq, the official said.

"Mushtaq Ahmed was an important part of the group and we understand that the group's leader was in contact with al-Libbi," the official added. "On their information explosives and all those things that they were to use in the attempt were recovered."

Officials said Thursday they had recaptured 26-year-old Ahmed, who was condemned to death in November for his role in the bombing of a bridge which collapsed moments after Musharraf's convoy passed through in December 2003.

Musharraf survived a second attack in the same area about two weeks later on Christmas Day, when two suicide bombers rammed explosives-laden vehicles into the presidential motorcade, killing 15 people.

Ahmed escaped from Chakala airbase near Islamabad soon after his conviction but was arrested on a tip off last week on a bus at an motorway exit point at Salam, 160 kilometres (99 miles) south of Islamabad.

A security official said it was possible the arrest of al-Libbi on Monday in Mardan town in North West Frontier Province was based on intelligence gleaned from those arrested in Punjab.

"Almost a week later a separate raid was conducted in Mardan where security forces got hold of two Arabs, one of them al-Libbi," the official told AFP.

The official said the identity of the other Arab had not been established but he appeared to be a mid-level operator. "In follow-up raids security agencies picked 10 Afghans but none of them is a big target," he said.

Ahmed was secretly a member of the Jaish-e-Mohammed Islamic extremist group, blamed for a late-2001 attack on the Indian parliament which nearly sparked a war between the South Asian rivals.

Alleged ringleader Arshad fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and was imprisoned by the forces of Northern Alliance warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam, officials said. He was released in 2003 and returned to Pakistan.

One of his fellow prisoners was a militant named Jameel Ahmed, who was one of the suicide bombers in the Christmas Day 2003 attempt to kill Musharraf, the officials added.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said Friday that al-Libbi's interrogation was "proceeding well" and that further action was under way. Aziz survived an Al-Qaeda-linked suicide attack in July 2004 in which nine people were killed.

A top US military official said that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden should worry that the capture of his operations chief, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, seen here, by Pakistani forces will hasten his own death or capture(AFP/HO-PIM)

U.S. agents attend grilling of bin Laden lieutenant

By Simon Cameron-Moore

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. agents and Pakistani authorities were interrogating one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants after the al Qaeda figure's capture this week, intelligence sources said on Friday.

Pakistan says Libyan militant Abu Faraj Farj al Liby orchestrated at least two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf, while U.S. officials describe him as the successor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the Al Qaeda No. 3 arrested in Pakistan in March 2003.

Speaking during a visit to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said: "I know that interrogations are going on and that they are proceeding well."

Intelligence sources say al Liby is a friend of Mohammed, the alleged brain behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"U.S. intelligence agents have been part of the operation to catch al Liby," said one intelligence official. "Al Liby is being interrogated jointly by a U.S. and Pakistani team."

Al Liby was captured in Pakistan's rugged North West Frontier Province on Monday with a handful of fighters, including an as yet unidentified al Qaeda figure who also carries a U.S. reward of several million dollars, one senior Pakistani official said.

The Libyan's association with bin Laden dates to the jihad, or holy war, that the United States covertly backed against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and to Sudan, where the al Qaeda chief and his cohorts were based in the early 1990s.

Prime Minister Aziz, who narrowly survived a suicide bomb attack that killed his driver in July last year, was non-committal when asked by reporters whether al Liby might lead investigators to bin Laden.

"NO IDEA ABOUT BIN LADEN"

"We have no idea about bin Laden. But certainly Mr Al Liby was a senior member of al Qaeda and we were on the lookout for him for a while and interrogations are in progress," Aziz said.

More than 20 suspects have been arrested since al Liby's capture, including eight in Lahore on Wednesday night. One of those, a Pakistani with links to al Qaeda, also had a bounty on him, an intelligence source said.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao denied a report quoting intelligence sources saying arrests in Lahore last week foiled a fresh attempt on Musharraf's life.

"There is no truth in it at all. Since the arrest of Abu Faraj, there have been all kinds of rumors," Sherpao told Reuters, while confirming other arrests this week.

How many of the suspects detained are actual al Qaeda members, Arab or foreign nationals who have joined bin Laden's Islamist network, is unknown.

President Musharraf has repeatedly said his security forces have "broken the back" of al Qaeda and its allies among Pakistan's militant groups over the past year.

Musharraf is regarded as a key U.S. ally and a bulwark against Islamist militancy in Pakistan, while his efforts to make peace over Kashmir with India has made some extremists hate him even more.

Pakistan has decimated al Qaeda in the past three years, arresting and killing hundreds of militants, but bin Laden's network struck back by enlisting Pakistani fighters.

Bin Laden had a ready-made pool of recruits in Pakistan, as its Sunni Muslim extremist groups share a similar world view, while militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir attended al Qaeda training camps on the Afghan-Pakistan border before 2001.

Most captured al Qaeda members have been handed over to the United States, but the homegrown militants, some of whom had been used by Pakistani intelligence before Musharraf joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism, fall in a different category.

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