Recent Appearances...

Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Amjad Farooqi

Harkatul Mujahideen

India-Pakistan

20060622

Link

India-Pakistan

UN recognizes threat to Pakistan by Afghan-based TTP, JuA terrorists

2021-02-07

[DailyTimes.pk] A new United Nations
...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
report has acknowledged the action taken by Pak government against individuals engaged in terrorist activities, adding that terrorist group Tehrik-e-Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
Pakistain (TTP) is responsible for over 100 cross-border attacks within three months last year.

On its part, Pakistain has consistently highlighted the terrorism threat from the TTP.

The 27th report to the United Nations Security Council, under the United Nations (UN) monitoring team that tracks Al Qaeda, Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
and other krazed killer groups, points to the arrests in Pakistain of ’individuals engaging in terrorism financing and the freezing of the assets of designated individuals and entities’.

Diplomats noted that the UN acknowledgment of Pakistain actions comes at a time when India continues to blame Pakistain for inaction against the designated groups.

Reporting on the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), the UN report saw the ’reunification of splinter groups (of TTP) that took place in Afghanistan’. The report records that ’five entities pledged alliance to TTP in July and August (2020), including the Shehryar Mehsud group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Hizb-ul-Ahrar, the Amjad Farooqi group and the Usman Saifullah group (formerly known as Lashkar-e- Jhangvi)’.

The report cautions that the merger of TTP has enhanced the threat of terrorism to Pakistain and the region, as it has ’increased the strength of TTP and resulted in a sharp increase in attacks’. In this regard, the UN reported that ’TTP was responsible for more than 100 cross-border attacks between July and October 2020’. The report said that, based on estimates, the TTP’s fighting strength ranges between 2,500 and 6,000.

Last year, Pakistain handed over a dossier to UN Secretary General António Guterres

...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years...
on the Indian sponsorship of TTP and JuA. Both terrorist groups have been designated by the 1267 Sanctions Committee of the Security Council.

Link

India-Pakistan

Police declare arrest of Lankan cricket team attacker

2011-05-18

[Dawn] Police have announced arrest of a suspected beturbanned goon allegedly involved in attack on Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in 2009.

District Police Officer Tassaduq Hiyat on Monday told a presser that Adnan Khosa alias Arshad alias Sajjad with code name `Cchotu` who was involved in attack on Sri Lankan cricketers.

He said Adnan was tossed in the clink in connection with a bank robbery in Taunsa and later turned out to be involved in attack on Sri Lankan cricketers.

The DPO said the police were looking for one of the bank robbers who managed to escape on Saturday immediately after committing the robbery.

He told journalists, Adnan whose name was on `Red book`, a list of high-value beturbanned goons, was nabbed on a tip-off in the jurisdiction of Raitra cop shoppe.

Adnan, a resident of Chah Fateh Hilal, Azamat Town, DG Khan, was wanted by police in a case registered in Gulberg cop shoppe under sections 109/395/427/186/353/324/302, 3/4 of the Explosives Act, and 7ATA following the assault on Sri Lankans, he added.

Mr Hiyat said Adnan was an operative of defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi`s Amjad Farooqi group that committed robberies to finance its terror plans.

He said The bank robbery plan was hatched in Miram Shah by a beturbanned goon, Saif Ullahh, who assigned the task to Adnan, Nuaman, Yousif and Umer. Talking to Dawn, Adnan`s father, Qari Arshad said his son had been studying at a madressah, Farooq-i-Azam at Shah Saddar Din from where he went missing along with a fellow student, Zubair.

Qari said soon after the attack on Sri Lankan team in Lahore, law-enforcement agencies had picked him and his elder brother but they were later released. He said later he went to Dubai as following his detention he was sacked from his teaching job.

He claimed Adnan, who had three younger brothers, had no contact with his family for the at least last three years.

Link

India-Pakistan

Over 100 suspects arrested in nationwide sweep

2009-10-19

Security agencies have arrested more than 100 suspects during ongoing operations against the Taliban throughout the country, private TV channels reported on Sunday.

Qaiser Cheema -- one of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mehsudd's close associates -- was arrested near Faisalabad. Another channel reported that police arrested seven foreigners travelling without proper documentation from Karachi to Peshawar.. In Islamabad, police have launched an operation to investigate madrassas operating without registration. A TV channel reported that at least two suspects who lacked identification documents had been arrested from Jamia Muhammadia, while the madrassa authorities denied this.

Meanwhile, police arrested at least 100 suspects, including Afghan nationals, during a search operation in Rawalpindi. Police sources told Daily Times the accused apprehended during the search operation would be freed after providing proof of identification. Separately, sources said three suspects, including an Afghan national, had been arrested on information provided by a suspect in custody. They claimed the accused were affiliated with the TTP's Amjad Farooqi Group. Also on Sunday, APP cited a private TV channel as reporting that Russian and Indian-manufactured weapons had been recovered from the region near the Bedian Road Elite Forces Training Centre.

Link

India-Pakistan

'Eight top terrorists inside Lal Masjid'

2007-07-09

Eight high value terrorists wanted by Pakistan and other countries are holed up inside Lal Masjid, while another was killed by security forces in the ongoing operation, Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq said on Sunday. Nine suspected terrorists said to be far more dangerous and harmful than Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives were hiding inside the mosque compound, Haq told a press conference here. He refused to reveal the identities of these militants.

He said that security forces killed one of these suspected terrorists inside Lal Masjid on the second day of the ongoing operation. He was the mastermind of the failed suicide attack on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Attock in 2005, he said.

Haq said that the militants and not Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Lal Masjids deputy chief cleric, were controlling the mosque. The militants are holding children and Ghazi hostage, he said. He said that of those who had surrendered to the security forces, three girl students were still unclaimed. They were being kept at the Pakistan Sports Complex.

He said that about 500 male and female students were still stranded inside the mosque. He also ruled out the government launching any action against other madrassas in Pakistan, including Jamia Faridia.

AFP adds: The hardcore militants inside include two commanders from the banned Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, security officials said. We believe there are militants from Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, which was involved in the [Daniel] Pearl murder. Based on intelligence we suspect that two commanders from the group are in there, one senior official told AFP. They have taken control and they are putting up fierce resistance. The information was based on intercepts and other intelligence, the officials said.

A source inside the mosque said there was a lot of tension among the various groups inside the compound on how to conduct the fight. He identified one of the Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami militants as Abu Zar, said to be a one-time accomplice of the groups late leader Amjad Farooqi, who was killed by security forces in 2004.

He also named a Pakistani Taliban militant from Waziristan, Mohammad Fida, as the security chief of the compound. There was no official confirmation of the names.

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistan denies arrest of Al Qaeda militant

2006-08-21

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Monday rejected reports that wanted Al Qaeda militant Matiur Rehman had been arrested and denied that he was linked to an alleged plot to blow up US-bound airliners. ABC News reported last week quoting unnamed intelligence sources that Rehman, who is also wanted in a December 25, 2003 attack on President Pervez Musharraf, was arrested from central Pakistan. The news channel and some newspapers have linked Rehman to an ongoing probe into the alleged conspiracy to bomb transatlantic jets flying from Britain and said Rehman was the key in the plot.

It is totally baseless, foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told AFP. It is a fictitious story. Matiur Rehman has not been arrested, we are still looking for him, she said. He is not linked to the airline plot, she added.

Methinks the lady douth protest too much

Pakistani agents earlier this month seized Briton Rashid Rauf in Bawahalpur in southern Punjab province, saying he was a key man in the airliner plot with links to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Security officials have said a Middle Eastern Al Qaeda operative suspected of masterminding the scheme is in Afghanistans eastern Kunar province bordering Pakistan.

Rehman, 32, who comes from from Bahawalpur, tops the Pakistani security agencies most wanted list and carries a bounty of 10 million rupees (166,666 dollars). He is also wanted for the bombing of the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi in 2002. Rehman is said to be a member of Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, a group which formed the core of the gang that kidnapped US reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002, and to have links with the anti-Shiite outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Officials say he took over from Amjad Farooqi -- one of the leaders of the Pearl gang who was killed by police in 2004 -- as the chief Pakistani facilitator for Al Qaeda in Pakistan. He was a close associate of former Al Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Libbi before the Libyan was arrested in northwestern Pakistan in 2005.

Either; 1. They ain't got him, 2. They've already put him on the CIA 'Ghost Plane', 3. Keeping his capture quiet until he gives up more of al-Qaeda or 4. They got him, but he knows too much to let us question him.

Link

India-Pakistan

Qaeda planning to attack army installations, VVIPs

2006-06-22

An Al Qaeda mission tasked with conducting suicide attacks targeting army installations and VVIPs has arrived in Pakistan from Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports submitted to the Interior Ministry. According to the reports, members of Al Qaeda and other banned terrorist groups met in Kabul some time ago and drew up the plan to target army installations in Islamabad and Rawalpindi and VVIPs associated with the government in a campaign to bring down the regime of General Pervez Musharraf.

An Arab by the name of Sheikh is said to have chaired the meeting, sources said. Salam Rehmani, a resident of Helmand and former deputy vice-chancellor of Kabul University under the Taliban, was appointed chief of the mission, the sources said. According to the intelligence reports, Rehmani has hired a man named Ajmal alias Riaz, a resident of Bahawalpur, to carry out the operation and Ajmal has been paid one million Afghanis for the purpose. Ajmal is from the same town as Amjad Farooqi, a militant leader killed in a shootout with security forces in 2005. According to the reports, Mohammad Qasim, a resident of Islamabad and a member of the banned Harkatul Mujahideen organisation, has been trained to conduct suicide bombings.

Another intelligence report submitted to the Interior Ministry said aides of Maulana Saifullah Akhtar of Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami and Maulana Fazalul Rehman Khalil of the banned Jamiat-ul-Ansar, have joined hands and formed a new group named Lashkar-e-Umer or Jaish-e-Islami, the sources said. Tahir Sher Mujahid, who reportedly fought jihads in Afghanistan and Chechnya, has been given command of the group, said the sources. They added that the group included Qari Abdul Hafiz, a close associate of Amjad Farooqi, and his associates.

Link

Afghanistan-Pak-India

2 LJ members arrested

2005-10-14

Rawalpindi police have arrested two members of the banned militant organisation Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, who they say were close to the alleged mastermind of the assassination attempts on President Musharraf in 2003. The two men - Syed Hameed ud Din and Israar ud Din - were arrested at Committee Chowk in Rawalpindi on Thursday evening, said Saud Aziz, the Rawalpindi district police officer (DPO).

Aziz said that sources had tipped off the police about the two menâs presence in the area, upon which the authorities took prompt action and made the arrests. Two hand-grenades and other weapons were recovered from the men, along with maps of âsensitive placesâ, the Rawalpindi DPO said. Aziz said that the two men were waiting to meet with another man at Committee Chowk, and had planned to proceed to Islamabad together. He said that the men were being interrogated by intelligence agencies at an undisclosed location. Aziz said that the two men were close allies of Amjad Farooqi, the alleged architect of the assassination attempts on the president on December 14 and 25, 2003. Farooqi was subsequently killed in a police encounter in May, 2004.

Link

Afghanistan/South Asia

Pakistani terr admits role in Pearl murder

2005-08-07

ISLAMABAD â A militant suspected of bringing murdered US reporter Daniel Pearl to his kidnappers has confessed he was working for two key Al Qaeda-linked operatives, police said on Saturday.

I see the Pakistani Olympic Truncheon team is still in fine form.

Mohammad Hashim Qadir was arrested last month in Gujranwala in the central province of Punjab. Security sources believe he set up a meeting between Pearl and militants who later kidnapped and killed him. âHe has confessed to his role in the Pearl case and to some robberies,â Gujranwala police chief Zafar Abbas told Reuters. No-one was available to give comment from Qadir himself.

And he wasn't feeling up to any press comments, either.

Abbas did not say what part Qadir, also known as Arif, played in the Wall Street Journal reporterâs abduction and murder, but said he had admitted taking instructions from two militants who played key roles in the plot. âHe confessed he was receiving orders from Omar Sheikh and Amjad Farooqi.â

British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, commonly known as Omar Sheikh, was sentenced to death in 2002 for masterminding the murder, but is still in jail awaiting an appeal hearing.

Surprised they didn't release him on a recognizance bond ...

Amjad Hussain Farooqi was named as a conspirator in the Pearl case, and was considered a key link between local militants and Al Qaeda planner Abu Faraj Farj Al Libbi, who was captured in Pakistan in May. Farooqi, who was also implicated in assassination plots against President Pervez Musharraf, was killed by security forces in the southern city of Nawabshah in September last year.

Not clear whether even his mother misses him ...

Investigators in Karachi, where Pearl was murdered, say Qadir acted as a go-between for Sheikh and Farooqi.

Link

Afghanistan/South Asia

One of the detained Paks is a JeM explosives expert

2005-07-19

Addressing a youth conference in Islamabad, Musharraf said nothing in the Holy Qurâan justified the July 7 attacks that killed at least 55 people.

âLaunching bomb attacks in London in the name of Islam is not Islam,â he said.

He accused banned militant organisations Jaish-e-Mohamed (Army of Mohammad) and Sipah-e-Sahaba (Soldiers of Mohammadâs Companions) of forcing their ideology upon others, although he did not link them to the London bombings.

He also took aim at Islamic schools that have been accused of helping to inspire the London attacks. Musharraf himself has been accused of failing to stick to a pledge to rein them in.

âYes, today, some Chennaisas are involved in extremism and terrorism,â he said.

Religious Affairs Minister Mohamed Ejaz ul Haq said the government is concerned after the London bombings that some madrassas might be violating government rules against preaching militancy.

Those found to have done so would be closed down, he said.

Musharrafâs comments came after an intelligence official named one of five militants detained by security forces at the weekend as Qari Usman, a Jaish-e-Mohamed bomb expert who may have been involved in a plot to kill Musharraf in 2003.

The militants were detained in the central city of Faisalabad as part of a crackdown launched after the London bombings, although no link had been established.

âThese people have been arrested because they are militants,â the official said. âWe are trying to establish if they had any links with those involved in the London blasts.â

The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Usman was a close associate of Amjad Farooqi, a key planner of a December 2003 attempt on Musharrafâs life and an associate of its Al Qaeda mastermind, Abu Faraj Farj al Liby.

Another intelligence official said other detentions in Faisalabad last week were based on information from Jaishâs Osama Nazir, who was arrested in December for a 2002 church bombing and met London bomber Shehzad Tanweer in Faisalabad in 2003.

Intelligence sources have said Tanweer visited madrassas in Pakistan, possibly including one linked to Jaish, in 2004.
However, some diplomats say any Jaish involvement in the London attacks is still far from clear.

While Pakistan has yet to confirm officially that three of the London bombers, Britons of Pakistani descent, visited Pakistan before the attacks, Pakistani immigration officials said they entered Pakistan via Karachi last year.

They said Tanweer, 22, and Mohammad Sidique Khan, 31, entered Karachi on November 19, 2004 and left for London from Karachi on on February 8, while Hasib Hussain, 18, entered Karachi from Riyadh on July 15, 2004.

The Daily News newspaper reported that Tanweer and Khan stayed at a hotel in Karachiâs central Saddar area for a week before
leaving for Lahore by train.

Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters Musharraf would address the nation some time this week on the London bombings and the crackdown on militants.

Link

Afghanistan/South Asia

6 assassination plots to date against Perv

2005-06-07

There have been six plots to kill President Musharraf since March 2002, says a report in the latest edition of Pakistani magazine, the Herald. Quoting army investigators, the report says there may also have been other "ill-planned attempts" by militant leaders who are now dead or in custody. Some of the attempts were thwarted by tight security or because parades the president was to attend were cancelled. Gen Musharraf survived twin attacks in December 2003 in which 17 people died.

The main planners included Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national convicted for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl on 31 January, 2004, the Herald report says. Investigators also point to a possible link with Abu Faraj al-Libbi, an al-Qaeda suspect of Libyan origin arrested in Pakistan on 4 May this year.

The network established by these masterminds may have penetrated the lower cadres of the army, investigators say. Nine people - of whom eight, including a woman, are civilians - are currently facing trial for their suspected involvement in these attempts. Two of the nine suspects - Rashid Qureshi and Arshad Mahmood - preached jihad (holy war) to serving soldiers more than once within the garrison limits in Rawalpindi, says the report. The two are also reported to have urged a group of eight soldiers at the Special Services Group camp in Abbotabad, north of the capital, Islamabad, to follow the fatwa (religious decree) of a Saudi cleric who wanted President Musharraf dead.

The magazine says details of the investigations into the attempts on President Musharraf's life were made available to it recently. According to these investigations, the first attempt on the president's life dates back to 2002, when a plan was hatched to attack the 23 March Pakistan Day parade with "kalashnikovs and grenades". The Herald says the conspiracy was planned in a meeting in Islamabad in October 2001 called by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Amjad Farooqi, head of Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and Rashid Qureshi. The last named is the principal accused in an attempt on the life of Shaukat Aziz, now Pakistan prime minister, last August. Omar Saeed Sheikh is said to have handled the weapons and finances for the plan. Military investigators are quoted as saying that the meeting may have been attended by 20 people. This has led them to believe that the threat to the president's life has not been entirely eliminated. The alleged plan to attack the Pakistan Day parade was abandoned when the parade was cancelled as it coincided with the Shia festival of Muharram, the report says.

The next mission is said to have been planned as a suicide attack on 6 December, 2002, when the president was supposed to offer Eid prayers at the Faisal mosque in Islamabad. But the attackers failed to get close to the president because of strict security, investigators found. The third apparent attempt was planned for 23 March, 2003. This time, the Pakistan Day parade was to have been attacked by missiles. The Herald report says four missiles were brought to Rawalpindi for the purpose. But the parade was cancelled again - this time for security reasons. Subsequent plans were hatched by Amjad Farooqi, the report says, as Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh had been arrested in connection with the murder of Daniel Pearl. Another attempt failed because jamming devices preventing an explosives-laden car from blowing up in Karachi as the president's motorcade drove past it, the authorities said.

Such a sustained campaign by the jihadis, says the report, demonstrates their resolve to eliminate President Musharraf. It also reflects their ability to penetrate the armed forces using militants disguised as preachers. The extent of such infiltration remains as yet unclear and thus a source of continuing anxiety for the authorities, the report concludes.

Link

Afghanistan/South Asia

Libbi Targeted Musharraf to Derail Peace

2005-05-19

The alleged Al-Qaeda No. 3 Abu Al-Faraj Al-Libbi has confessed to masterminding two assassination attempts against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to derail his peace moves with India, a report said. Libbi, who was arrested two weeks ago in Mardan, told his interrogators that he worked with a group of Pakistani militants belonging to different jehadi groups to carry out suicide bombings against Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December 2003, The News said, quoting sources privy to the investigations.

The first bomb went off after Musharraf's cavalcade passed over a bridge. The president narrowly escaped the second attempt on Christmas Day, in which 17 people, including the two bombers, were killed. One bomber was identified as Muhammad Jameel of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group that is active in India's Jammu and Kashmir and the other was said to be an Afghan. "Preliminary investigation suggests that Libbi's motive was specifically to target Musharraf, whose initiatives were aimed at uprooting extremism from Pakistan and bringing peace with India," The News said. "Though it is difficult to glean information from a trained militant like Libbi, he is cooperating with the interrogators," it quoted an official as saying.

The fabled Number 7 truncheon, with the leather grips. Accept no subsitutes!

"He has accepted the responsibility for planning the attacks on Musharraf and has even given some important leads as well about his contacts with various jehadis," the official said. "We have got some invaluable information during the interrogation that could lead us to bust the network or nexus of splinter groups of local jehadi groups which are believed to have links with Al-Qaeda," the official added.

Following Libbi's capture, 24 local militants have been rounded up from different parts of the country, including from Islamabad and Peshawar, and more arrests are expected. However, it is yet to be ascertained whether the attempts on Musharraf's life were Libbi's brainchild or came on orders from Osama Bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman-Al Zawahiri.

Libbi, a 40-year-old Libyan, exploited the anger of local jehadis who were upset with Musharraf's ban on Kashmiri groups. He had also met Amjad Farooqi, who headed the militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and was killed last year after a gun battle with security forces. Farooqi introduced Libbi to several local militants who agreed to be part of assassination plots against Musharraf, the newspaper said. Libbi and his group of militants also carried out sectarian attacks, especially in Quetta, in which dozens of people were killed in a series of bombings in July 2003. The group spread rumors that India and Iran were behind the attacks. This was meant to create unrest in Pakistan and to harm Musharraf's peace initiatives, The News said.

Link

Afghanistan/South Asia

Al-Libbi betrayed by skin disorder

2005-05-05

IT did not take long for Pakistani authorities to confirm the identity of the motorcycle riding-militant they had caught after a fierce gunfight in a remote north-western town. His skin gave him away. Alleged al-Qaeda No.3 Abu Faraj al-Libbi looked more like a businessman with his trimmed beard and smart collar and tie when his picture first featured on a Pakistani most wanted poster last year. But a very different face appeared on Wednesday in the first photograph after his capture. Not just the straggly beard and haunted look, but the facial blotching caused by the skin disorder leucoderma, or vitiligo, the condition suffered by pop star Michael Jackson. "It was easy for us to immediately recognise him because he is suffering from this peculiar skin disease and it was not difficult to know that 'yes, we've got al-Libbi", a government minister said on condition of anonymity.

Until a year ago the 40-year-old Libyan was a relative unknown. When he first came to prominence in Pakistan during interrogations after two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, intelligence agencies only knew him as ~~Mr Big~~ Dr Taufeeq. But investigators then rounded up a key Pakistani militant, Salahuddin Bhatti, and his grilling disclosed both al-Libbi's origins and his position in the al-Qaeda hierarchy as the operational chief in Pakistan. They soon realised that he had filled the vacuum left by the capture in March 2003 of key 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Further confirmation emerged when security forces captured the terror network's computer expert Naeem Noor Khan and Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, wanted by the US for bombing two American embassies in East Africa in 1998. "Both Naeem and Khalfan used to get instructions from him also," a security official who was involved in the initial interrogation of the duo said. Their arrests in July last year revealed al-Qaeda had planned terror attacks in the US and Britain that led to a worldwide terror alert. "The information that we had gathered about him was that he had been getting instructions from Osama bin Laden," another security official said.

According to Pakistan and US defence officials, he became a senior member of what is left of the al-Qaeda leadership from before the US-led military campaign that removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Al-Libbi is thought to have become bin Laden's ~~lover~~ personal assistant during the 1990s, when he was involved in providing training to militants at the Al-Farooq camp near the Afghan capital Kabul before the war, security officials said. The connections he developed there also gave him access to the funds and the manpower to mastermind a string of terrorist attacks and the ability to blend into the background of Pakistan's chaotic cities and towns. He also had a Pakistani wife.

Al-Libbi also used his contacts to evade arrest, moving from one place to the other, living in Lahore with Ghailani then the south-west province of Baluchistan and finally conservative Northwest Frontier Province.

One of his key contacts became Pakistani al-Qaeda militant Amjad Farooqi, who was gunned down by security forces last September. A recruiter of militants and suicide bombers from the ranks of Pakistan's sectarian Islamic groups and the jihad holy warriors trained in Afghan camps to fight there and in divided Kashmir, Farooqi got al-Libbi the men he needed for his terror plans. Al-Libbi also used his contacts to evade arrest, moving from one place to the other, living in Lahore with Ghailani then the south-west province of Baluchistan and finally conservative Northwest Frontier Province. It was there, in the town of Mardan, that security forces captured him as he rode on a motorcycle with another man on Monday.

Security officials now hope they can use al-Libbi's network of militants themselves to track down the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership and possibly bin Laden himself. "He is one of his closest confidants and he should be able to provide new leads about Osama," another security official said on condition of anonymity.

Link

Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$T in /data/rantburg.com/www/pgrecentorg.php on line 132
-12 More