Posted on 09/16/2002 3:26:42 PM PDT by knighthawk
LONDON: Karachi is teeming with terrorists in the knowledge of the government, and this is what made it possible for two key al-Qaeda men to operate from there, according to a report in The Times.
In reference to the arrests of al-Qaeda suspects last week, it said: "In the cluttered back streets of Karachi there were few who believed their government's boast that the latest arrests have ended al-Qaeda's operations inside Pakistan."
For months, Western intelligence agencies had suspected that some of Osama Bin Laden's lieutenants were hiding in the Pakistani port city of 12 million that has no shortage of safe havens for Islamic militants, said the Times.
The virulent anti-American sentiment is evident in regular street demonstrations in Karachi and it was here that two of Bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants arrived last June.
The support network was already in place for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, head of al-Qaeda's military committee, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who called himself the coordinator for the September 11 attacks.
The Times report details al-Qaeda operations in Karachi.
"Hundreds of fighters from the wars in (Jammu and) Kashmir, Afghanistan and Chechnya live in this teeming city and it was a veteran of a Bin Laden training camp who in the summer rented the spacious apartment in a high-rise block in what is known as the Defence Housing District where the senior al-Qaeda men were captured last week after a shootout.
"There were women and children with the group who took over adjoining apartments on the sixth floor of the address at 15th Commercial Street, where their neighbours included officers of the Pakistani army.
"The two al-Qaeda men were careful not to draw attention to themselves, appearing to spend most of their time playing cards or watching television. Their reason for being in Karachi was principally to help others from al-Qaeda to escape abroad.
"The popular image is of al-Qaeda men hiding out in the inhospitable mountain ranges that fringe the border with Afghanistan, moving around on horseback after dark, never showing their faces and paying local tribal chieftains to provide some modest safe house.
"Men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tire of such hardship and prefer city dwelling, even though the risks of discovery are greater.
"The way in which Ramzi Binalshibh spoke about Bin Laden led some intelligence analysts to suspect the al-Qaeda leader was dead and this performance by the soft-spoken Yemeni quartermaster was evidence of how the network would survive without its founder.
"His arrest has provided the much-criticised ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), the Pakistani intelligence service, with a coup and given FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents a chance to interrogate a man known to be trusted with al-Qaeda's secrets.
"Binalshibh was crucial to the network's day-to-day operations. His job was to link terrorist cells around the world with the high command.
"He is thought to be the only man left alive who attended the two al-Qaeda summits where the detail for the US attacks were worked out.
"The first was in Manila in January 2000, where the 30-year-old student revealed who would undertake the mission, and the second in Spain in July 2001, where he met his old roommate, the hijack leader Mohammed Atta, at a holiday resort near Tarragona to make final arrangements.
"It was Binalshibh who wired money to flight schools and to the hijackers' bank accounts.
"In London in December 2000, he picked a French Moroccan, Zacarias Moussaoui, to take his place as the 10th hijacker when it was obvious that the Yemeni quartermaster was not going to get an American visa.
"The priority for interrogators now is to discover if any attacks are imminent and, if Bin Laden is alive, whether he too has made it to Pakistan."
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