March 4, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 30, 1423

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RAWALPINDI, March 3: President Pervez Musharraf’s spokesman Rashid Qureshi on Monday strongly dismissed claims that Khalid Sheikh had been shifted out of Pakistan.

Mr Qureshi told Dawn: “Those who have been claiming that Khalid has been taken out of Pakistan are totally wrong. He is still with us.”

However, a source told Dawn that the suspected mastermind of the Sept 11 attacks, captured in a joint raid by the US and Pakistani security officials on Saturday, had been shifted to an undisclosed location in the NWFP province by road on Sunday.

The government claims the arrested persons are still in the custody of Pakistani authorities.

Mr Qureshi also said the identity of the second foreigner, who had been captured along with Khalid Sheikh, was yet to be established.

Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat also dismissed reports that the suspect had been moved out of Pakistan, saying the foreign media reports giving this impression were false.

Pakistani officials are interrogating the alleged plotter of Sept 11 terrorist attacks, he added, according to the APP.

Meanwhile, the family of Ahmed Abdul Qudoos and some of their neighbours of Westridge II told newsmen at a press conference at Rawalpindi Press Club that the family have been residing in house 18-A for the last 18 years. The neighbours said the family was known to be law-abiding and peaceable.

They said: “We condemn the raid during which the doctor’s son, a simple and noble man, had been kidnapped without any legal justification.”

They also presented some official letters which had been issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and also produced a medical certificate, showing Mr Khan Ahmed Quddus as mentally deranged.

The sister of the arrested Pakistani, Ahmed Quddus, disclosed that doctor Abdul Quddus has another son, Adil Quddus, serving in Pakistan Army and posted in Kohat. He had applied for leave of absence but was not being allowed to leave the station, she told Dawn.

She said she did not know Adil’s present whereabouts. However, no other person of her father’s family was either missing or arrested, she said.

A senior government official denied that Mr Adil had been arrested from Kohat. “It can not been called an arrest,” the official said.