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Pakistan hunting for top al-Qaeda masterminds
August 06 2004 at 03:14PM
By Rana Jawad
Islamabad - Pakistan is hunting two top North African al-Qaeda "masterminds" who head one of the terror network's cells, officials said on Friday, after cracking a major worldwide al-Qaeda wing plotting new attacks in Britain and the United States.
The men, identified as Libyan national Abu Farj and an Egyptian known only as Hamza, are close associates of senior al-Qaeda operatives arrested in major anti-terror swoops in Pakistan since July 12.
Farj and Hamza "are extremely important al-Qaeda operatives and they are hiding in Pakistan," a senior security official said, on condition of anonymity.
'We are now desperately searching for these two al-Qaeda masterminds'
"We are now desperately searching for these two al-Qaeda masterminds with the help of information obtained from the already captured al-Qaeda operatives."
Farj and Hamza both had a $5-million (about R30-million) bounty on their heads, offered by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The July arrests of Pakistani computer expert Naeem Noor Khan and Tanzanian suspect in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, led to the capture of senior al-Qaeda operatives in Britain and a recent high alert in United States cities against possible terror attacks.
The Pakistani official said the plots were for attacks "in coming months".
Their arrests had broken a major al-Qaeda wing planning attacks by al-Qaeda sleeper cells on Britain and the US in coming months, he said.
'Our information so far is that the targets were in America and the UK'
Computer files and email records seized from Ghailani and Khan showed they were communicating with al-Qaeda operatives from the US to south Asia to south-east Asia, to plan imminent attacks in Britain and the United States.
"Their email records showed correspondence between groups in the United Kingdom, the US, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Nepal, in which they were exchanging information about targets to be attacked in coming months," the official said.
"Our information so far is that the targets were in America and the UK."
The official declined to say what sort of attacks were being planned, nor would he identify the targets.
Their computer files contained detailed surveillance records of key financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington.
The computer records showed that the Pakistan-based wing of al-Qaeda was "in regular touch with al-Qaeda sleeper cells in the US, Britain, Indonesia, Malaysia, and some South Asian countries."
The capture of senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Eisa Al Hindi in Britain was an "important blow" to the network's planning capabilities, he said.
Ghailani, who was indicted in December 1998 for his alleged role in the Africa bombings, had been hiding in Pakistan's north-west tribal region earlier in the year. He fled eastwards to the crowded industrial town Gujrat just over a month ago, security officials have said.
Al-Hindi directed the surveillance of US financial institutions years ago that led this week to the heightened security alerts, unnamed senior US officials told the New York Times.
Al-Hindi was "intimately involved" in producing and perhaps writing the reconnaissance reports found on computer disks in Pakistan last week, the officials told the Times.
A law enforcement official told the Times there was evidence he carried out surveillance on the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup building in New York City's Manhattan island, and at the Prudential site in Newark, New Jersey.
US officials announced on Sunday that al-Qaeda had targeted the three sites in New York and New Jersey as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington.
In response, authorities raised the colour-coded alert level from yellow, or "elevated," to orange, or "high," for the three US cities and boosted security around the targeted areas.
A senior US official described the discovery of Ghailani's and Khan's files as "a catalytic event" that provided the basis for Al-Hindi's arrest after the CIA relayed the information to London.
Computer expert Khan had played an operational role in gathering information about US targets, US officials said.
Another suspect arrested in London on Thursday at Washington's request was Babar Ahmed, a British citizen who is alleged to have solicited funds and property between early 2001 and late 2003 for "acts of terrorism in Chechnya and Afghanistan", according to a US arrest warrant.
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