Pakistan is believed to have handed over
a key Al Qaeda operative, Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, to US
authorities who have taken him to an undisclosed location,
US and diplomatic sources told Dawn on Tuesday.
Ghailani, the alleged mastermind of the
1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa that
killed 224 people, was arrested in Gujrat last week. Some
sources, however, claim that he was caught earlier but
his arrest was disclosed only after he and a dozen of
his accomplices arrested from an Al Qaeda hideout in Gurjat
had been thoroughly 'debriefed' by US and Pakistani intelligence
officials.
Ghailani was apparently handed over to
a CIA team on Sunday night and was flown out of the country
in an unmarked plane, the sources said. Meanwhile, US
intelligence and law enforcement officials are saying
that much of the information that led to the declaration
of a high security alert in Washington and New York was
three or four years old.
Briefing reporters in Washington on the
nature of the threat, some officials even questioned the
Bush administration's decision to declare a high security
alert based on dated information.
The administration, however, defended
its decision saying that they had reasons to believe that
Al Qaeda was planning attacks in the United States during
this election year.
In separate appearances,
both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney said the new alert underscores the continuing threat
posed by Al Qaeda. "It's a serious business. We would
not be contacting authorities at the local level unless
something was real," said Mr. Bush.
