Posted on 05/31/2005 2:13:29 PM PDT by macher
A senior al-Qaeda suspect captured in Pakistan is to be deported to the US after he revealed little useful information about Osama bin Laden. Abu Faraj al-Libbi, thought to have had direct contact with Bin Laden, may already have left Pakistan for the US, President Pervez Musharraf revealed.
Libbi, a Libyan also suspected of twice trying to kill Mr Musharraf, will now face fresh interrogation in the US.
Libbi was arrested following a gunfight in Karachi on 2 May.
Speaking to a conference organised by CNN, Mr Musharraf indicated that he was unsure whether Libbi remained in Pakistani custody.
He backtracked after initially saying that he may have already been handed over, saying that according to three-day-old information, he was still in the country.
But he stressed: "We are obviously going to deport him. We don't want him in Pakistan."
Number three?
Mr Musharraf said there were "bigger issues" at stake than bringing al-Libbi to trial in Pakistan accused of two assassination attempts on the president.
Seventeen people died in the second attack, on 25 December 2003.
Mr Musharraf faces opposition at home to his pro-US policy The president said Libbi had showed no signs that he had actually had any contact with Osama bin Laden, who has been in hiding since the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001.
Many, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, have alleged that bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the north-west frontier, but Mr Musharraf dismissed those suggestions as "conjecture".
Security sources in the US and in Pakistan have described Libbi as al-Qaeda's "number three", calling his arrest the most important since the capture of the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in 2003.
But he does not appear on a US wanted list, and other observers have cast doubt on his al-Qaeda credentials.
Mr Musharraf, who says Pakistan has arrested about 7,000 al-Qaeda suspects since 2001, told the conference that "al-Qaeda no longer exists as a homogenous body".
The BBC's Paul Anderson in Islamabad says some analysts see recent violence in Karachi and Islamabad as a sign that militant organisations are still active and capable of delivering a blow.
He will be sent to Guantanamo, issued a Koran, an MSM reported, a lawyer and cell phone to contact the ACLU. This guys just a murdering terrorists so we have to insure we don't damage his self esteem or abuse his rights.
He's got to be really afraid of that after surviving Pakistani interrogation
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