KARACHI, Sept 14: US and Pakistani officials said on Saturday that they are questioning key Al Qaeda suspect, Ramzi bin Al-Shaiba, after arresting him in Karachi on the first anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks, which he is accused of helping to plan.
Al-Shaiba, a 30-year Yemeni, who is wanted by Germany for his alleged role in planning and carrying out the hijacked plane attacks on the United States, is one of the most important members of Al Qaeda wanted for over the past year.
A US official said Al-Shaiba was captured in Karachi by Pakistani authorities with help from the FBI and CIA.
However, interior ministry said Al-Shaiba was the second suspected senior member of Al Qaeda network to be arrested in the city this week. It said in a statement that 12 foreigners were held in two raids.
“Two out of those arrested are suspected to be high-level Al Qaeda men and their identity is being confirmed.”
SEVERAL HELD:In Karachi, officials said Al-Shaiba and several other suspects had been arrested on Wednesday after a three-hour gunbattle, and said they were being questioned at a secure location inside the country.
“He was arrested during this operation,” Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told reporters here.
Asked where the suspects were now, he said: “They are with the intelligence agencies. So far they are with us.”
A senior police officer added: “The FBI and Pakistani intelligence agencies are investigating them.”
Police said US agents had traced Al-Shaiba to a three-storey building in Karachi after tracing down a satellite phone call.
But when the place was raided on Wednesday, security and intelligence agents met armed resistance and only arrested Ramiz bin Al-Shaiba after a shootout in which two Al Qaeda suspects were killed and six policemen and a four-year-old girl were wounded.
“A satellite phone conversation helped the US FBI trace these suspects,” a senior policeman told Reuters.
“The FBI and ISI had initially raided the place and arrested two suspects, but later police were called out to help in the operation when other suspects present in the building retaliated.”
“One arrested person identified himself only as Ramzi and said he was an Arab,” the officer added.
The US officials have said the Yemeni national, who was refused a visa into the United States at least four times before Sept 11, 2001, wanted to join the 19 hijackers involved in last year’s attack.
US government sources in Washington said earlier that Ramzi bin Al-Shaiba was in US custody at an undisclosed location.
EXTRADITION: The interior minister told reporters that Pakistan would hand over the suspects if asked.
“Many of these people, if they are wanted by the US government, we are obliged to share this information.
“According to UN conventions we are bound to hand them over.”
Asked whether there had been any extradition request, the minister said: “They may have asked for (this).”
German Interior Minister Otto Schily said on Saturday that he was going to seek Al-Shaiba’s extradition to Germany, where the suspect once lived with Mohammed Atta. An international arrest warrant had been issued by Germany and “this was going to be pursued”, Schily said at a meeting of European Union ministers in Copenhagen.
MOHAHHAD ATTA: Al-Shaiba was one of the roommates of Mohammed Atta — the suspected ringleader of the hijackers — in Hamburg, Germany.
Ramzi is suspected of helping plan attacks and was very prominent in the Hamburg cell. His capture was considered a significant development in the US goal of destroying the network, the officials said.
He was not as high in the organization as Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March and handed over to US authorities. They have been interrogating him at a secret location outside the United States.
There was confusion about how many of Al-Shaiba associates had been arrested in Wednesday’s raid.
Police said they had arrested five men that day, and also taken into custody a foreign woman who was living in the building with her two young children, one of whom was wounded.
“All the arrested people are foreigners, including a woman and her two children,” the policeman said. “But we don’t know whether the woman and her kids have any connection with the arrested Al Qaeda suspects or not.”
MUSHARRAF: President Pervez Musharraf hailed the arrest of Al-Shaiba and said: “The arrest of these people is a proof that Pakistan is doing whatever is possible to curb terrorism,” Pakistani journalists accompanying Musharraf quoted him as saying in New York.
The president described the arrests as “a major achievement by ISI.
In an interview aired on CNN, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf spoke of 10 suspects being arrested, describing them as one Egyptian, one Saudi Arabian and eight Yemenis.
Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said the names and nationalities of the arrested men would be released later.
Witnesses said one man shouted Allah Akbar as he was led away, while a policeman said the Kalima, was written in blood on the wall of the apartment’s kitchen.
Police said they had recovered a satellite phone, a laptop and “a few CDs of Osama’s speeches” from the apartment.
Ramzi bin Al-Shaiba’s capture came just days after a journalist with Al-Jazeera Arabic satellite television said he interviewed the Yemeni in or around Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi.
Al-Shaiba and another key Al Qaeda member reportedly affirmed that Osama bin Laden was personally involved in planning the Sept 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
Yosri Fouda, the Al-Jazeera journalist who said he interviewed Al-Shaiba, said the Yemeni claimed to be the coordinator of the September 11 attacks. Al-Shaiba said Atta called him on Aug 29 last year and told him a riddle to set the date of the attacks, Fouda said.
One of the suspected hijackers had tried to enrol Al-Shaiba in a flight school in Florida.
After Al-Shaiba was unable to get into the United States, the leaders of the plot may have tried to find someone else to take part in the hijacking of the fourth plane, top FBI officials have said.
The plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept 11 had four hijackers. The other three planes, which smashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, each had five hijackers.
Al-Shaiba is mentioned repeatedly in the indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in connection with the Sept 11 attacks.
The indictment mentions at least four times that Al-Shaiba applied for and failed to receive a visa to enter the United States. It also details various money transfers he made to the hijackers and to Moussaoui.—Reuters
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