A top al-Qaida operative is captured in Pakistan

By Kamran Khan
The Washington Post

AP A police officer holds bullet shells from a gunbattle Sunday during which Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was captured.

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Ghailani, a Tanzanian citizen said to be in his early 30s, was seized early Sunday, along with his wife and five other African or Pakistani al-Qaida suspects, following a joint Pakistani-U.S. intelligence operation, senior Pakistani police and intelligence officials said. The capture followed a 10-hour shootout in the industrial city of Gujrat, 125 miles south of Islamabad.

"This is a big success," Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said in an unusual late-night announcement on Pakistan's Geo television network. "More importantly, we are certain of gathering some latest intelligence on al-Qaida from him," Hayat said later.

The operation to capture Ghailani, who is on the list of the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists, was supervised by agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and coordinated with CIA and FBI officials, according to an official in Punjab state who was present. The official said 240 Punjab policemen raided a rented house in a middle-class neighborhood of Gujrat.

	Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was captured in Pakistan.

In Washington, a senior FBI official said the capture "looks like the right guy." The FBI did not play a role in the raid, said the official, who declined to be identified because of FBI policies.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow declined to comment on whether U.S. intelligence played any role in the capture. There is a $25 million bounty on Ghailani.

Ghailani was being held at an undisclosed location and would be debriefed "to our satisfaction before handing him over to the U.S. for the trial," Hayat said. Another senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. agents had been participating in the interrogation since the arrest and that Ghailani was isolated from the other suspects shortly after his capture.

Two Punjab police officials said intelligence officials who accompanied them in the raid were particularly interested in two laptops recovered from the hide-out.

"We understand that all technical stuff like the computers and cellphones and a flash computer drive have already been handed to the U.S. agents who were definitely present in Gujrat at the time of the raid," one official said.

Another senior Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Ghailani's capture was a result of the arrest last month of a lesser al-Qaida suspect in Karachi. Electronic intercepts conducted by U.S. technical teams based in Pakistan led them to the Gujrat hide-out.

A senior Punjab police officer and an intelligence official, both involved in the operation to nab Ghailani, said in separate interviews that U.S. and Pakistani officials had confirmed his identity shortly after the arrest.

Pakistani officials have rejected allegations that they delayed the announcement for four days to obtain maximum publicity. Hayat said the delay was a result of "double checks and even triple checks."

But in the arrests of other high-profile al-Qaida targets in Pakistan, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, the news media received word almost immediately.

"What difference will it make if we do not rush to make a hasty unconfirmed claim?" Hayat said. He said he saw no connection between the late announcement of Ghailani's arrest and the Democratic National Convention in the United States.

Ghailani was indicted Dec. 16, 1998, in the Southern District of New York for his alleged role in the embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998. More than 200 people, including 12 Americans, were killed and thousands were wounded.

Ghailani is suspected of buying the truck used as the vehicle bomb in the attack in Dar es Salaam, in which 12 people were killed. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

Osama bin Laden is believed by U.S. authorities to have selected the targets. Several bin Laden associates have been convicted in the bombings, but others are still at large.

Ghailani also was implicated in an effort by al-Qaida to finance terrorist operations by trading diamonds in Africa, an operation that began six months after the embassy bombings.

U.S. intelligence documents list Ghailani among al-Qaida operatives who traveled to Liberia in March 1999 and later toured diamond fields controlled by Liberian officials and their allies in the rebel Revolutionary United Front in neighboring Sierra Leone.

An investigation by several countries found evidence that al-Qaida operatives oversaw a $20 million operation to corner the market on African gemstones.

Staff writers Dan Eggen and Dana Priest in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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