 A militant given a life sentence in his absence for the murders of 11 French engineers was captured in Pakistan's largest city yesterday after he fell off his motorcycle following a gun battle with police.
| "Oooh! That's gonna leave a mark! Stick 'em up!" |
Mohammed Sohail was also wanted over the killing of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, whose murder he is suspected of filming. He was among six men who fired on police from motorcycles, said Fayyaz Khan, a Karachi police investigator. He said officers had asked them to stop at a routine checkpoint that has often been attacked by Islamic militants. The five other suspects fled and Sohail admitted being a member of Harkat Jihad-e-Islami, an outlawed Islamic militant group, Khan added. In 2003, Sohail was sentenced to death for the car bombing in front of Karachi's Sheraton Hotel which killed 11 Frenchmen building a submarine for Pakistan's navy. The government had offered a £22,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Sohail was allegedly a close aide to an al Qaeda strategist and is suspected of shooting the video that showed Pearl's throat being slit.
Also in the war on terror, a suspect in the Madrid train bombings was found a year ago to have a sketch of New York's Grand Central station. El Mundo newspaper said the sketch, and technical data about the station, were found on a computer disk seized about two weeks after last year's March 11 train bombings, which killed 191 people. Spanish police turned the disk over to the FBI and CIA in December, the newspaper said. In New York Michael Bloomberg, the mayor, confirmed the FBI had informed the police of the find. "We've taken the appropriate steps . . . to beef up security at all of the major transportation hubs train stations and airports and bus stations, places where you say if a terrorist wanted to attack, they would," he said. The sketch was found in the home of Mouhannad Almallah, a Syrian who was arrested in Madrid on March 24 but later released, although he is still considered a suspect.
Three other accused Islamic militants have been charged with using Spain as a staging ground for the September 11 attacks. Their trials are expected to begin next month. One of the three, Ghasoub al Abrash Ghayoun, a Syrian, went to the US in 1997 and shot video footage of the Twin Towers, the Golden Gate Bridge and other landmarks for al Qaeda chiefs in Afghanistan, Spanish prosecutors allege. New York City police are "very concerned" that al Qaeda is pursuing efforts to obtain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, the department's counter-terrorism commissioner said yesterday. Michael Sheehan said officials knew Osama bin Laden's network was searching for biological weaponry, and that it appeared to have supporters with medical and scientific backgrounds who could handle such weapons. "We are very concerned they are still trying to seek chemical, biological or radiological weapons," he said at an Interpol conference on bio-terrorism in Lyon, France. "We don't have any information that at this time they have that capability, but we do know they're trying to get it," he added.
Back in New York, a convicted leader of a terrorist cell told a court of two visits paid by Osama bin Laden to an al Qaeda training camp. "They had everyone sing a welcoming song for him," said Yahya Goba. The 28-year-old witness at the trial of Mohamed al Moayad, a Yemeni cleric accused of financially backing al Qaeda and Hamas, said Bin Laden then made a speech about "uniting in jihad".
Bin Laden's half brother, meanwhile, has lost his appeal in a Swiss libel case over his purported financial ties with terrorism. The supreme court in Lausanne ruled against Yeslam Binladin in his action against L'Hebdo magazine, over an article speculating that his Geneva-based firm could have handled terrorist funds. |
Switzerland's supreme court on Thursday ordered the country's justice authorities to halt cooperation with a French probe linked to a half brother of Osama bin Laden, Yeslam Binladin.