THE US: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11th terrorist attacks and one of Osama bin Laden's most senior lieutenants, was yesterday being questioned at an unknown location after his capture in Pakistan.
Pakistani officials reported that Mohammed had been handed over to the US following his seizure in a pre-dawn raid in Rawalpindi on Saturday and that he would be flown to the US-controlled air base at Bagram in Afghanistan.
However, Pakistan's interior minister later denied these reports and said that Mohammed was still in Pakistan.
"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in the custody of Pakistan's law-enforcement agencies and until we have satisfied ourselves, after the interrogation process, of the nature of his activities in Pakistan, there is no question of handing him over to anyone," Mr Faisal Saleh Hayat told Reuters.
"That's fantastic," the White House quoted him as saying.
Mohammed, an uncle of Ramzi Yousef - convicted over the 1993 bomb attack on New York's World Trade Centre - was believed to be in the process of regrouping the al-Qaeda network in the aftermath of their rout from Afghanistan.
Mohammed, born to Pakistani parents but claiming several Arab nationalities, including Kuwaiti, is considered number three in the al-Qaeda network after bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Pakistani intelligence sources said he was in possession of the names of members of al-Qaeda "sleeper cells" in the US when arrested.
On the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) list of 22 most-wanted terrorists, Mohammed is alleged to have been a key planner of the September 11th 2001 hijacked plane attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, which killed more than 3,000 people.
Described as highly-intelligent, fluent in four languages and a vital cog in al-Qaeda's financial network, Mohammed has been wanted by the US since 1995 in connection with a plot to blow up aircraft over the Pacific Ocean.
He was captured with two other men, one Middle Eastern and one Pakistani activist of the Jamaat-i-Islami political party, in a raid at about 3 a.m. on Saturday by FBI and Pakistani intelligence agents in the northern city of Rawalpindi, close to the capital, Islamabad.
Mohammed had narrowly eluded Pakistani and US intelligence agents in several raids, including one last week in the south-western city of Quetta.
The White House called Mohammed "one of Osama bin Laden's most senior and significant lieutenants, a key al-Qaeda planner and the mastermind of the September 11th attacks".
The CIA director, Mr George Tenet, once referred to Mohammed as the "common thread" connecting the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993 to the September 11th attacks.
A report in Time magazine said that Mohammed also carried out the execution of kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002, although investigators have denied the allegation.
Shortly before the first anniversary of September 11th, Mohammed and alleged co-planner Ramzi bin al-Shaiba gave an interview from a Karachi hideout to a journalist from the Arab al-Jazeera TV network.
The journalist was led to their apartment blindfolded, where the pair described in detail how al-Qaeda planned and carried out the attacks on what they called "holy Tuesday".
Mohammed "knows a lot . . . about al-Qaeda's operations, and that could be valuable if he decides he wants to talk to us," said a top US official who had been involved in the hunt for him.
Mohammed is the third senior Al-Qaeda operative to be arrested in Pakistan since the defeat of the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan in November 2001 after a US-led bombing campaign.
In March last year, Pakistani and FBI agents arrested Abu Zubaydah bin al-Shaiba in Karachi on the eve of September 11th 2002. This raid that narrowly failed to net Mohammed.
Analysts have described Mohammed as a pivotal figure in al-Qaeda who planned its operations, vetting all its recruits. It was speculated that he might know the present whereabouts of both bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the fugitive leader of Afghanistan's former Taliban government.
Pakistani officials said that the others held following the dawn raid were a Pakistani and a foreigner of Arab origin. An intelligence source said that the third man was an Egyptian.
However, the family of the arrested Pakistani, Ahmed Quddus, said that he was the only person seized when up to 25 armed security men raided their home.
Some analysts speculated that Mohammed might have been held for some time, with the news only being made public when it was in the interests of the US and Pakistan. - (AFP, Reuters)