US and Pakistani officials said they were questioning key al Qaeda suspect Ramzi Binalshibh yesterday after arresting him in Pakistan on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks he is accused of helping to plan.
Pakistan's government added that a second high-level al Qaeda suspect was also being held after a series of raids in the sprawling port city of Karachi this week which have netted a total of 12 foreign suspects and left two dead.
Binalshibh, who is wanted by Germany for his alleged role in planning and carrying out the hijacked plane attacks on the United States, is one of the most important members of al Qaeda to be taken into custody over the past year.
A US official said Binalshibh was captured in Karachi by Pakistani authorities with help from the FBI and CIA.
US officials have said the Yemeni national, who was refused a visa into the US at least four times before September 11, 2001, wanted to join the 19 hijackers involved in last year's attack.
In Pakistan, officials said Binalshibh and four other suspected al Qaeda militants had been arrested on Wednesday after a three-hour gunbattle, and said they were being questioned at a secure location inside Pakistan.
"He was arrested during this operation," Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told reporters in Karachi.
At least one other raid was conducted in Karachi on Monday night, Haider's ministry later said in statement, and a total of 12 foreigners were being held. Asked where the suspects were now, Haider said: "They are with the intelligence agencies. So far they are with us."
A senior police officer added: "The FBI and Pakistani intelligence agencies are investigating them."
Haider said Pakistan was ready to hand the suspects over to the US authorities if there was evidence they were involved in terrorist activities. But the German government said it also wanted to try Binalshibh.
"We in Germany have issued an international arrest warrant that we want to enforce. If there are competing interests we must come to an agreement with other countries," German Interior Minister Otto Schily told Germany's ARD television in Copenhagen.
Pakistani police said US agents had traced Binalshibh to a three-storey building in an upmarket district of the sprawling port city of Karachi thanks to a satellite phone call.
But security and intelligence agents met armed resistance when they raided the building on Wednesday and only arrested Binalshibh after a shootout in which two al Qaeda suspects were killed and six policemen and a four-year-old girl were wounded.
"A satellite phone conversation helped the US FBI trace these suspects," a senior Pakistani policeman told Reuters.
"The FBI and Pakistan ISI (intelligence agency) had initially raided the place and arrested two suspects, but later police were called out to help in the operation when other suspects present in the building retaliated."
Binalshibh was one of the roommates of Mohamed Atta - the suspected ringleader of the September 11 hijackers - in Hamburg, Germany.
Binalshibh is suspected of helping plan attacks and was very prominent in the Hamburg cell. His capture was considered a significant development in the US goal of destroying the network, the officials said.
Binalshibh was not as high in the organisation as Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March and turned over to US authorities.
But German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said in an article yesterday that Binalshibh was a rising star in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and could have been the leader of the Hamburg cell rather than Atta.