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Posted on 05/02/2006 10:20:34 PM PDT by neverdem
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL — A top Al Qaeda strategist with a $5 million (U.S.) bounty on his head and followers from Afghanistan to Europe has been captured in Pakistan, a U.S. law enforcement official confirmed.
Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, who once wrote a 1,600-page autobiographical book on ways to attack Islam's enemies, has been flown out of the country after being interrogated by Pakistani and American authorities, Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday. They did not specify where he was taken.
Terror analysts said Nasar's capture has dealt a blow to Al Qaeda and other militant movements he aided through his virulent anti-western writings and weapons training. His movements have been traced to Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and two European capitals.
Nasar, 47, a Syrian-Spanish national, was seized in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta in November 2005, said the American official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. Nasar was arrested in a sting operation, which sparked a gunfight in which one person was killed, the official said.
The raid apparently took place Nov. 1. At the time, Pakistani officials said they had captured two possible Al Qaeda suspects and a third man with ties to a Pakistani extremist group. Intelligence officials had said they were investigating whether one of the suspects was Nasar.
Nasar, an Islamic ideologue wanted by American and Spanish authorities for terror-related activities, "may have been turned over to the U.S." after his capture, the American official told the AP late last week. He would not say where Nasar may have been sent, and U.S. officials in Washington declined to comment Tuesday.
Pakistani and American officials have long been tightlipped on the status of Nasar, described by the U.S. Justice Department as a former trainer at Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan who helped teach extremists to use poisons and chemicals before the U.S.-led invasion of this country after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The Syrian native's dual citizenship — he was married to a Spanish woman — and his western appearance made him difficult to find. His looks could resemble an Irish pub patron: red hair, light skin, stocky build. When he grew out his beard, Nasar, whose aliases ranged from Abu Musab al-Suri to Blond Blond, blended into Islamic society.
Previous reports indicated his journey into extremism began in the 1980s when he joined radical groups including the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has opposed the Syrian government and developed ties with terror groups.
By 1988, Nasar was with the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where he met bin Laden and became a leader of the Syrians associated with early Al Qaeda, Spanish court documents say. When bin Laden moved his operations to Sudan in 1991, Nasar was known to visit.
Nasar deepened his European roots in the 1990s, living at various points in Madrid and London. Spanish police put him under surveillance in 1995, and Nasar packed up for London.
By late 1997, Nasar was running a training camp financed by bin Laden and keeping close contact with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, according to Spanish intelligence documents.
He was believed to be in Afghanistan at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, which he says were predicted by the Prophet Mohammed as events leading to victory for Islam. "The duty of jihad is a must until the end of days," he wrote.
In 2004, Nasar released a 1,600-page book titled The International Islamic Resistance Call. He lists Islam's enemies as ``Jews, Americans, British, Russian and any and all of the NATO countries, as well as any country that takes the position of oppressing Islam and Muslims," according to a translation from the Washington-based SITE Institute.
Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said Nasar's capture dealt a major blow to Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic movements as he was the "most prolific writer" of jihadi propaganda and had close links with extremists throughout Europe and South Asia.
"The ideologues are as equally important as the operational people and he was in close contact with very prominent figures with movements in different countries, particularly the North African region," said Gunaratna.
Pakistan, a close U.S. ally in the war on terror, has captured more than 750 Al Qaeda figures, among them top leaders, and handed them over to American authorities for interrogation.
These include Al Qaeda's former No. 3, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks who was arrested in March 2003 near Islamabad, and his purported replacement, Abu Farraj al-Libbi, who was detained in May 2005 in Pakistan's northwest.
U.S. military officials aware of the detention of terror suspects at American prison facilities in Bagram, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said they had no immediate information Tuesday on whether Nasar had been incarcerated at either jail.
But a senior Pakistani intelligence official told the AP Nasar had been flown out of Pakistan to an undisclosed destination "some time ago."
God bless Pakistan. I know it's not all so pretty and innocent, but what place really is.
good now go ahead and hang him.
Seems the MSM was out of the loop
This will get the MSM and the Washington DC "traitor class" working again.....
" ...Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday. They did not specify where he was taken.
They took him to Paris for interogation by Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE)...pass it around.
The raid apparently took place Nov. 1
sounds like a few months of gathering info.
Is that a disturbance in the force I sense? Could something be coming? Something big?
Let's hope the ACLU type folk weren't around for the...ummm...questioning sesssions.
prisoner6
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His looks could resemble an Irish pub patron: red hair, light skin, stocky build
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jesus...i saw a picture of this guy and its a face only a mother could love...what type of irish bars does this guy drink in!!!
They were on their way, but the plane they were on, hit some turbulence, and the one wing dipped precipitiously.. The ACLU lawyers, weren't strapped in, and they all fell against the cargo door...it wasn't properly latvched, and popped open...The ACLU lawyers were splattered all over
the side of a mountain covered with prickly bushes..well,
that's what they think the gooey meesses they found when they went looking for them....Morale at the base they were
to work at, was curiously..unaffexcted by the deaths of
the ACLU lawyers....
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MI ping
ping
heh heh
I think they should release him...at 10,000 feet over the Indian Ocean.
perhaps the news was delayed until he outlived his utility?
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