KABUL, May 2: A top Al Qaeda leader whose links stretch from Afghan terror training camps to extremist networks operating throughout Europe has been captured in Pakistan, according to a US law-enforcement official. Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a Syrian who also holds Spanish citizenship, was captured in a November 2005 sting operation in Quetta that left one person dead, said the American official.

Pakistani officials said on Tuesday that Nasar has since been flown out of the country to an unspecified location.

The American official said Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, may now be in US custody but did not specify where. He declined to comment further.

Pakistan says it has arrested about 750 other Al Qaeda suspects in the past four years, and most of them have been handed over to the US. Nasar had a $5 million US bounty on his head.

US military officials aware of the detention of terror suspects at American prison facilities in Bagram, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had no immediate information Tuesday on whether Nasar had been incarcerated at either jail.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official told AP from Islamabad that Nasar had been flown out of Pakistan to an undisclosed destination “some time ago.”

“I only know that he is not here. But, I do know that Syrian authorities had also requested to get him back,” said the official.

—AP