Pakistan Reports Arrest of a Senior Qaeda Leader
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: May 5, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/international/asia/05pakistan.html?th&emc=th  (must register to view original article)

This article was reported by Salman Masood, Mohammed Khan and Somini Sengupta and written by Ms. Sengupta.

Pakistani authorities announced yesterday the arrest of a senior operative for Al Qaeda who is suspected of directing two failed assassination attempts against the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Both Pakistani and American officials described the man, a Libyan named Abu Faraj al-Libbi, as the third most senior leader in Al Qaeda's terrorist network, and President Bush called the arrest a "critical victory in the war on terror." But counterterrorism experts in Europe immediately raised questions about Mr. Libbi's importance.

Pakistani officials said virtually nothing about either the circumstances of Mr. Libbi's arrest or the extent of American aid in the operation. The Central Intelligence Agency has worked extensively with Pakistani agents to search for Osama bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders in the tribal regions of the restive North-West Frontier Province.

Pakistani officials said the arrest came early Monday in Mardan, a town 30 miles north of Peshawar.

Both Pakistani and American officials seized on the arrest as a success in their joint efforts. "This is a big catch," Pakistan's information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, said in a telephone interview. "We were looking for him for a very long time."

White House officials described the arrest as the most important blow to Al Qaeda since the seizure more than two years ago of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the 9/11 attacks.

Pakistani officials said Mr. Libbi had succeeded Mr. Mohammed as head of Al Qaeda's operations in Pakistan, and American officials said he was involved in planning attacks in the United States.

But some intelligence officials in Europe expressed surprise at hearing Mr. Libbi described as Al Qaeda's third-highest leader, pointing out that he does not figure on the F.B.I.'s most-wanted list.

There is another Qaeda operative on the list with a similar name, Abu al-Liby, also a Libyan, who was indicted for an "operational role" in the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa in August 1998. (The surname, in its various transliterations, means simply the Libyan.)

American officials, when asked about the doubts, dismissed the idea that they had confused the Libyans, saying they know Mr. Liby is on the list, and reaffirming the importance of Mr. Libbi. To be included on the F.B.I.'s most wanted list, they noted, a terrorist must have been indicted by a federal grand jury, which Mr. Libbi has not.

Another senior counterterrorism official based in Europe, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the Americans' version, saying Mr. Libbi had indeed become an important operational commander of Al Qaeda. He had worked directly with Mr. Mohammed, the official said, and assumed many of Mr. Mohammed's responsibilities in Pakistan after the latter's arrest. "He's someone we have been watching closely for a while now," the official said.

The official went on to say that Mr. Libbi is believed to be among the few members of the organization who know the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In a photograph released yesterday by Pakistani authorities, Mr. Libbi appeared disheveled, with an ill-kempt beard, in sharp contrast to the well-groomed, smartly suited man whose portrait appeared on Pakistan's most-wanted list. Pakistan had offered a reward of roughly $340,000 for information leading to his arrest.

How Mr. Libbi was captured, and with what degree of American assistance, remains vague. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said a tip early Monday led to a suspected hideout in Mardan. When intelligence officials arrived, he fled on a motorbike. They pursued him, with two of them disguised as burka-clad women, until Mr. Libbi holed up in a house.

For 45 minutes, security forces urged the man to give up, said Amanullah Khan, the Mardan superintendent of police. Mr. Khan said he punched through a window and lobbed a tear-gas canister inside. A man emerged, he said, "hands in the air and head slightly bowed."

"He was unarmed," Mr. Khan went on. "I searched him and he only had a cell phone on him."

Intelligence officials quickly whisked him away. Neither Pakistani nor American officials would say whether Mr. Libbi, like Mr. Mohammed and other Qaeda officials being held by the American government at undisclosed locations, would be taken into United States custody.

Mr. Libbi is the chief suspect in two assassination attempts in December 2003, both in Rawalpindi. In the first, a bomb ripped through a bridge just moments after General Musharraf's motorcade had passed; no one was hurt. In the second, suicide bombers descended upon the president's car in two vehicles stuffed with explosives; nearly 17 people, mostly officers, were killed.

Mr. Libbi's suspected accomplice in those attacks was a well-known Pakistani militant named Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who was also implicated in the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in February 2002. Mr. Farooqi was killed last September in a shootout with security forces in southern Pakistan.

Two Pakistani soldiers have been convicted in connection with the assassination attempts; one of them, sentenced to death, managed to escape from a military prison last November.

General Musharraf's alliance with the American-led campaign against terrorism has made him a target of Islamist militants who once counted Pakistan as an ally. At the same time, his government is under intense pressure from Washington to produce results. Hints of similarly high-profile arrests have come and gone in the past.

Though the C.I.A. has played a leading role in working with Pakistani intelligence, the American counterterrorism official would not be more precise about the role the agency or others might have played in the arrest yesterday, except to say that human intelligence had "played a critical role."

Indeed, Washington seemed keen to credit the Pakistanis, a notion that is likely to play well with General Musharraf's audience at home.

"The Pakistanis are to be congratulated for the hard work that they did," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday. "Of course, we've been cooperating with them, but the Pakistanis, as we've been saying, have been really stalwart in the war on terrorism."

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, for this article, Mohammed Khan from Peshawar, and Somini Sengupta from New Delhi. Douglas Jehl contributed reporting from Washington and Don Van Natta Jr. from London.