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Authorities closed in on KSM in Spring 2003. When arrested, US citizen and NYC resident Uzair Paracha said he had met in February 2003 a chemistry professor who was supposed to help Al Qaeda with biological and chemical weapons. It was a big break, therefore, when the son of the imprisoned blind sheik, Abdel Rahman, was captured in Quetta, Pakistan in mid-February 2003. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman from Aghanistan spoke alongside Ali Al-Timimi at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1996. The blind sheik’s son Mohammed Abdel-Rahman had recently had been in contact with Khalid Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s #3. Two weeks after Mohammed’s capture, authorities raided microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse in Alexandria, VA, and searched the residence of a couple of PhD level drying experts in Idaho and Upstate NY, along with various others associated with IANA. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman then provided information that led authorities to the home of the bacteriologist that had harbored KSM. Anthrax spray drying documents were found, both on a computer and in hard copy.

One report indicates that authorities, with the help of American communications experts, traced an email that Mohammed Abdel-Rahman had sent to an email associated with the home of bacteriologist Qadoos in Rawalpindi. Yet another report says that some unidentified Egyptian collected a $27 million reward for informing on KSM and then relocated first to Great Britain and then to the US. (Perhaps this is a different Egyptian or perhaps the intelligence officials are seeking to cause turmoil among the blind sheik’s supporters). According to Amnesty, Abdel-Rahman Jr. was “whereabouts unknown” as of 2006. He is not on the list of Gitmo detainees.

In June 2003, a UN report explained that Al-Qaeda has a “WMD Committee,” which according to the report, “is known to have approached a number of Muslim scientists … to assist the terrorist network with the creation and procurement of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.” Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a member of the 3-member WMD committee, knew Ali Al-Timimi. Ali Al-Timimi conducted a summer camp at a park in Frederick, Maryland over the years. The kids liked the outdoors and ponds. The FBI searched the park’s ponds more than once claiming that Dr. Hatfill had once suggested that someone could weaponize anthrax and discard the equipment in a pond.

Mohammed Abdel-Rahman is one of the missing prisoners whose absence from Guantanamo leads human rights researchers to believe that the CIA is still operating secret prisons. There is a possibility that he was rendered to Egypt. This is the possiblity I favor. The US has refused to comment on where he is. (He is one of the subjects of the FOIA lawsuit filed by NYU, HRW, etc.)

The very well-informed Pakistani journalist Zahid Hussain says in his book, Frontline Pakistan that KSM was actually captured in February from a house in Quetta — presumably the same one where Abdel-Rahman was captured. Supposedly he had been tracked for four weeks before that. Zahid Hussain says that they did not make his arrest public because they wanted to capture other al-Qaeda members or sympathizers, such as the Qadoos family. This would be consistent with the strident denials by the bacteriologist’s family that KSM was captured at their home. The arrest of KSM’s other nephew, Musaad Aruchi, for example, is supposed to have led them to many others. Aruchi is another of the missing prisoners.

The timing of the raid on Al-Timimi’s house two weeks later certainly suggests that it was connected. They had been engaged in surveillance and “trashing” and interception of targets related to the charity for many months. The investigation — including arrests, searches, and some convictions — apparently did not produce any prosecutable evidence of anyone’s involvement in Amerithrax. The timing of the February 26, 2003 raids, however, perhaps related to what Mohammed Abdel-Rahman and KSM told authorities, for example, about Aafia Siddiqui, who was connected to the blind sheik’s Al Kifah organization. An AUSA has said that Aafia was prepared to participate in an anthrax attack if asked. She opened up a mailbox in Gaithersburg, Maryland as part of operations. She used a fake name. Hey, FBI: now THAT’S solid evidence.