US must wait for al-Qaeda man

2004-07-31 09:54

Islamabad - Pakistan has said it will only consider extraditing a senior al-Qaeda suspect after its own interrogation of the man is complete.

Top government officials said his arrest shows Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network is crumbling.

A top Pakistani security official said on Friday that the information that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was providing to his interrogators has already been shared with American intelligence, and that experts had begun to scour computer hard drives and diskettes found during his arrest.

Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat said the arrest was a "great blow to the al-Qaeda" network of Osama bin Laden, but refused to say whether Ghailani had any knowledge of the terror leader's whereabouts.

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the rugged mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, though there is no hard evidence of his location.

'Flush out terrorists'

"Pakistan is determined to flush out terrorists from its soil and dismantle their network definitively," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Masood Khan said, in reference to al-Qaeda. "The latest arrests indicate that the network is crumbling down."

Ghailani, one of the FBIs 22 most wanted terrorists and a man with a $25m bounty on his head, has been indicted in the Southern District of New York for his alleged role in the 1998 twin US embassy bombings, which killed more than 200 people. He could face the death penalty.

Interior Ministry spokesperson Abdul Rauf Chaudhry said his government had not yet received any request from Washington for Ghailani's extradition.

"So far, they have not made any such request, but we are expecting it," he said.

He said Pakistan would consider extradition: "But, first we would like to interrogate him thoroughly to check his links with other people in Pakistan."

A six-year odyssey

Meanwhile, Tanzanian police spokesperson Ernest Saria said his country had not yet decided whether to seek custody of Ghailani or clear his extradition to America.

Ghailani's arrest on Sunday after an intense 12-hour firefight in the eastern city of Gujrat ended a six-year odyssey that began when he boarded a Kenyan Airways flight to the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, leaving Africa before bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Until his arrest, that was the last known sighting of the baby-faced and slightly built explosives expert, believed to be about 30 years old.

The security official said he did not believe the $25m reward would be paid, as the information that led to Ghailani's capture came from a Pakistani terror suspect already under interrogation in a separate case. The man has not been identified.

He denied that American intelligence agencies were involved in the sting that netted Ghailani.

"We have shared this intelligence with our American friends," the security official said on condition of anonymity.

- AP