Jo'burg terror attacks planned

2004-08-03 16:12

Islamabad - Two South Africans in Pakistani custody have told interrogators they had planned to attack tourist sites in Johannesburg, a security official said on Tuesday.

"They had hatched a plot to carry out terrorist attacks on Johannesburg's main tourist sites," the official, who is familiar with the interrogation, told AFP.

The pair - Abu Bakar and Zubair Ismail - were arrested last week in the eastern Pakistani city of Gujrat along with Tanzanian al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, indicted by the United States over the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

Bakar, a doctor, and Ismail, described as new recruits to Osama bin Laden's terror network, had arrived in Pakistan's second largest city of Lahore early July, the official said on condition of anonymity.

They joined Ghailani in Gujrat, 160km southeast of Islamabad, and together hid out in a rented house.

The house was stormed by police commandoes on July 25 and after an eight hour shootout the pair were arrested with Ghailani, his Uzbek wife, three other women and some Pakistani "facilitators."

Maps, foreign currency, computers, computer discs and Arabic-language documents were found in his hideout, another security official said.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the information on the computer was "valuable" and had been passed on to Pakistan's "friends", a reference to its close war on terrorism ally the United States.

- AFP