Interrogators probing al Qaeda plans

Suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was in US custody yesterday, a US official said, and was expected to be questioned on details of planned al Qaeda attacks after his weekend capture.

Mohammed's interrogators would also be hoping for leads to the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, analysts said, as Mohammed spent a third day in custody.

The US official told Reuters in Washington that Mohammed had been taken out of Pakistan to an undisclosed location for interrogation after his capture with two other al Qaeda suspects.

Mohammed was solely in US custody, the official said. Pakistani Interior Minister Faisel Saleh Hayat and Presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi had earlier insisted Mohammed was still in Pakistan, being jointly interrogated by Pakistani and US agents.

Hayat told reporters one of the men arrested with Mohammed, previously identified by an intelligence source as an Egyptian, was Somali, but gave no other details.

A Pakistani, Ahmed Quddus, was also arrested in the raid. Military sources said a fourth man, an army major related to Quddus, was detained for questioning about his links to the arrested men.

Ahmed's sister Qudsia Khanum told reporters the major, their brother Adil, had not been allowed to leave the northwestern town of Kohat, but had not been arrested.

State-run Pakistan Television quoted Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed as telling reporters Mohammed was traced through an intercept of a satellite phone call he made from the western city of Quetta, where another al Qaeda suspect was detained in mid-February.

Analysts said interrogators would aim to extract information from Mohammed on planned al Qaeda attacks which prompted recent security alerts in Europe and the United States, as well as the whereabouts of al Qaeda leader bin Laden.

"The need is to forestall any possible attacks in Europe and the US which were being organised by Mohammed," said author and political analyst Ahmed Rashid, an expert on al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

"There have been alerts recently and these were probably related to attacks in the planning stages by Mohammed," he said.

"This is the major business," Rashid said, adding that al Qaeda cells planning such attacks would probably have started to scatter after learning of Mohammed's arrest.

Security analyst Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier, told Reuters he believed interrogators would use torture to get information. "I would be surprised if they don't," he said.

Qadir said Kuwati-born Mohammed's arrest was likely to lead to more arrests, but not necessarily to bin Laden. "I am sure they will interrogate him about where Osama is, but I am sure he does not know," he said.

Amin Saikal, head of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, said bin Laden would probably have fled soon after Mohammed's arrest was announced.

"This is an opportunity for Osama bin Laden to move on. If the US is certain he is still alive and want to capture him then they should not have announced his."

Analysts have described Mohammed as a pivotal figure in al Qaeda who planned its operations and vetted all its recruits.

The United States, under criticism for failing to arrest the top leaders of al Qaeda while focusing on a possible war on Iraq, was elated by news of Mohammed's arrest, describing him as "a key al Qaeda planner and the mastermind of the September 11 attacks".

The White House said yesterday President George W. Bush had expressed his "deep appreciation and gratitude" to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for Mohammed's capture.

"This is a very serious development, a blow to al Qaeda," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

The chairman of the US House of Representatives intelligence committee, Porter Goss, said it would result in "other very successful activities soon" and suggested US operatives were already acting on information seized when Mohammed was arrested.

Some analysts have questioned whether Mohammed was actually arrested on Saturday and speculated he might have been held for some time and the news made public when it suited the interests of the United States and Pakistan.

The family of the Pakistani arrested with him, Ahmed Quddus, said Quddus was the only person seized when 20 to 25 armed security men raided their home in the middle-class Rawalpindi district of Westridge before dawn on Saturday.

Washington had put a $25 million price on Mohammed, one of 22 people on the FBI's list of "most wanted terrorists".

The September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington by hijacked airliners killed about 3,000 people and Mohammed has been associated with virtually ever other major al Qaeda attack.

He was indicted in the United States in 1996 for his alleged role in a plot to blow up 12 US airliners over the Pacific and intelligence officials in the Philippines say he was part of a cell accused of plotting to kill Pope John Paul in 1995.

He is also suspected of involvement in the bombing of US embassies in Africa in 1998 and an attack on a US warship, the USS Cole, in Yemen in 2000.

A Pakistani newspaper has linked him to the kidnapping and murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl. It said investigators believed Mohammed was the man who slit Pearl's throat in front of a video camera after the journalist disappeared in Karachi in January 2002 while investigating a story on Islamic extremists.