U.S., Pakistan Officials Question Key 9/11 Suspect

14/09/2002| IslamWeb

U.S. and Pakistani officials said they were questioning key al Qaeda suspect Ramzi Binalshibh on Saturday 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 U.S. official said Binalshibh was captured in Karachi by Pakistani authorities with help from the FBI and CIA.

U.S. officials have said the Yemeni national, who was refused a visa into the United States 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 U.S. 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 U.S. agents had traced Binalshibh to a three-story 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 U.S. 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."

"One arrested person identified himself only as Ramzi and said he was an Arab," the officer added.

ROOMMATE OF MOHAMED ATTA

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 U.S. goal of destroying the network, the officials said.

Binalshibh was not as high in the organization as Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March and turned over to U.S. authorities.

But German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said in an article on Saturday 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.

It said he had also become something of an icon within the movement, adding that many Taliban fighters had been found carrying his photograph.
Most of the arrested men appeared to be Yemeni, like Binalshibh. In an interview aired on CNN, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf talked of 10 suspects being arrested, describing them as one Egyptian, one Saudi Arabian and eight Yemenis.

Haider said one of the dead men may have been Egyptian but said others killed or arrested were Yemeni.

One of the arrested men, wearing a blue T-shirt, blindfolded by the police but bearing a close resemblance to Binalshibh, shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) as he was led away by police after Wednesday's raid.

"There was a gentleman who was calling himself Abdullah something Omar but we suspect he is possibly Ramzi Binalshibh, because his features, his photographs resemble him," Haider told Reuters Television. "So he is an important man. He is a Yemeni."

Binalshibh is also known as Ramzi bin al-Shaibah or Ramzi Mohammad Abdullah Omar.

DECLARATION OF FAITH WRITTEN IN BLOOD

Police said they had recovered a satellite phone, a laptop and "a few CDs of Osama's speeches" from the apartment.

A policeman at the scene on Wednesday said the Kalma, the Muslim declaration of faith, was written in blood on the wall of the apartment's kitchen.

Binalshibh's capture came just days after a journalist with al-Jazeera Arabic satellite television said he interviewed the Yemeni in or around Karachi.

Binalshibh and another key al Qaeda member reportedly affirmed that bin Laden was personally involved in planning the September 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.

Yosri Fouda, the al-Jazeera journalist who said he interviewed Binalshibh, said the Yemeni claimed to be the coordinator of the September 11 attacks.

One of the suspected hijackers had tried to enroll Binalshibh in a flight school in Florida. After Binalshibh was unable to get into the United States, the leaders of the plot may have tried to find someone else to take part in the hijacking of the fourth plane, top FBI officials have said.

The airplane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on September 11 had four hijackers. The other three planes, which smashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, each had five hijackers.

PHOTO CAPTION

Security officials escort a gunman (C) arrested after a gunbattle in the southern port city of Karachi in this September 11, 2002 file photo. Key al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh was arrested after the long gun battle in Pakistan, on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks he is accused of helping to plan, U.S. and Pakistani officials said on September 13, 2002. Police said they had arrested five men that day, including Binalshibh. 'One arrested person identified himself only as Ramzi and said he was an Arab,' a senior Pakistani policeman told Reuters. (Zahid Hussein/Re