Free Republic

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation. Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for...

UK 'ignored spy's al-Qaeda fear' Hamza was spied on by Nasiri UK intelligence services were warned of the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the mid 1990s but did not act quickly enough, says a spy who infiltrated the network.The agent told the BBC he warned his handlers that al-Qaeda was better organised than was previously thought. Known by the pseudonym of Omar Nasiri, he worked for intelligence in the UK and France, and trained in Afghanistan. Mr Nasiri also claimed a senior al-Qaeda operative planted evidence to provoke the US into war against Iraq. Ibn Sheikh Al-Libi fabricated links...