KARACHI, Jan 20: Seven suspected members of Al Qaeda, picked up on Sunday, were shifted to Islamabad early on Tuesday morning, intelligence sources said.

They said that the suspects were flown to the capital by a special aircraft. One of them, identified as Ameer Hussain Abdullah Al-Misri, was likely to be handed to the US authorities in a day or two, they added.

The sources said that Al-Misri told the local investigators that he was in contact with Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, who had been awarded death penalty for killing American journalist Daniel Pearl.

They said that Al-Misri had obtained militant training in Afghanistan and also learnt flying. He was a graduate and had a command over English and Persian languages besides Arabic. He left Afghanistan, as the Taliban regime was toppled. He entered Pakistan through Chaman border alongwith his Afghan friends. Later, he shifted to Karachi, the sources claimed.

The sources said that arrangements were being made to send the arrested women and children to their home country. They did not disclose the fate of other four suspected men.

Seven people, including two women, were picked up for their suspected links with Al Qaeda from an apartment in Cassim Complex in Gulistan-i-Jauhar in a pre-dawn raid on Sunday. Three children were also among those arrested. Five grenades, four TT pistols, a lot of ammunitions and maps were recovered from their possession.

It may be mentioned here that several Al Qaeda suspects had been picked up from various localities in Karachi and handed over to the US authorities for further investigation for the last two years.