December 20, 2001	Thursday	Shawwal 4, 1422

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KOHAT, Dec 19: The military authorities shifted 15 Al-Qaeda members arrested on Wednesday in Kohat to Peshawar amid tight security for interrogation by a Joint Investigation Team at the Special Branch headquarters on Wednesday morning.

The Al-Qaeda members which include nine injured Arabs, are the citizens of Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who had been fighting along with the Taliban in Afghanistan since 1994.

There had been no information about one body of an Arab recovered from a coaster on Wednesday last, one of the officials interrogating the Al-Qaeda members told Dawn on Sunday last. Two of them are the drivers of coasters in which they were being taken to Peshawar from North Waziristan Agency.

The Al-Qaeda members were shifted to Peshawar in an army vehicle escorted by a military team.

The Arabs, during the preliminary interrogation, revealed that until October there were 7000 foreigners in Afghanistan, excluding Pakistanis. Most of them were sheltering near the Pakistan-Afghan border whereas some of them were accompanying Osama bin Laden or were still in hiding inside Afghanistan.

They told the army intelligence officers that in 1999 the total number of Arab fighters in Afghanistan was 9000. The army source when asked about the whereabouts of the remaining 2000 Arabs said that he could not disclose this but admitted that they were not in Afghanistan now and had left to other countries.

All the arrested Arabs were very critical of the role of the Pakistan government for supporting the US-led coalition and accused President Gen Pervez Musharraf of betraying the Muslim freedom fighters and Taliban, an investigation officer told Dawn.