KOHAT, March 20: Major Adil Qudoos, brother of Ahmad Qudoos, from whose house Al Qaeda leader Sheikh Ahmad was arrested, has been shifted from Kohat to Rawalpindi, highly-placed sources told Dawn on Wednesday night.

Major Adil was arrested in a surprise raid on March 1 from his cantonment residence here for his alleged connections with Al Qaeda. He belongs to the 45-Signals regiment which has its headquarters at the Kohat Cantonment.

He was first asked to give details about Sheikh Ahmed whether the latter visited Kohat in recent days or last year and about whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar, it has been learnt.

Earlier, it was claimed that the major had not been arrested by the FBI and would not be interrogated by US agents.

A senior official of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) talking to Dawn said that nobody from the FBI was involved in the Kohat operation.

However, an FBI team was interrogating suspects in Islamabad.

He said that during a high-level coordination meeting of intelligence agencies held on Tuesday it had been decided to put army patrolling on the western border at the highest alert in the light of disclosures made by Sheikh Khalid Mohammad and Ahmed Qudoos.