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| January 14, 2003 | Tuesday | Ziqa'ad 10, 1423 |
Australian being quizzed for Al Qaeda links
ISLAMABAD, Jan 13: An Australian man believed to have trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has been arrested in Pakistan and is being probed for links to the terrorist network, officials said on Monday.
The man, a Caucasian, was pulled off from a plane by Pakistani authorities at Karachi’s international airport on Jan 4 and arrested, said a senior Karachi-based security official involved in the investigation.
The man, 29, was named by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as Jack Terence Thomas, a former Melbourne taxi driver who was believed to have travelled to Pakistan in 2001 to study Islam before heading to Afghanistan.
He is being held by investigators in Karachi.
“He was offloaded from a plane at Karachi airport,” the official said on condition of anonymity, unaware of the plane’s destination.
“He’s a white Australian. He’s in custody and is being investigated for his links to some Arabs who are suspected of links to Al Qaeda.”
His arrest was connected to the arrest five days later of two Arab Al Qaeda suspects in a violent pre-dawn raid on a private home also in Karachi, the security official said.
“The arrests of the Australian and the two Arab suspects are inter-connected,” he said.
One of the men arrested on Jan 9 was Iraqi and the other was a Jordanian-Palestinian, he said, rejecting earlier police identifications of the men as Moroccan and Yemeni.
The daughter of a Pakistani hockey player and his politician wife who occupied the ground floor of the raided home had lived in Australia for several years and returned to Pakistan in 2002, he said.
The security official said the Australian was connected to “a Muslim group operating in Chechnya.”
Brig Javed Cheema, who heads the interior ministry’s Crisis Management Cell, said the Australian had not been charged.
“He has not been charged. Investigations are still going on,” Cheema said.
The man was believed to have trained with Al Qaeda, Australia’s Attorney General Darryl Williams told reporters in Adelaide.
“It is alleged that he trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in mid-2001 and for the last year or so has been in Pakistan,” Williams said, adding that Australian authorities had been trying to trace him for the past year.
The Australian High Commission in Islamabad said it was seeking consular access to the man.
“We’ve been told he’s in good health,” a high commission official said.
The man is the fourth Australian to be detained on suspicion of having Al Qaeda links, and the second to be captured in Pakistan.
Williams said the Australian detainee could be charged under Pakistani law.
Two Australians, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, are being held at Guantanamo Bay, and a third is facing charges of plotting to blow up Israeli missions in Australia and is awaiting trial.—AFP
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