Blow for al-Qaida leadership as suspects arrested

Younis al-Mauritani’s arrest five days before the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was seen as a blow to al-Qaida’s central leadership in Pakistan, which should further affect its ability to mount terrorist attacks abroad.

The terrorist organisation has seen its senior ranks thinned since Osama bin Laden was killed in May then Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s second in command, as the result of a CIA missile strike last month.

The Pakistani military said the arrests, with CIA co-operation, took place near the Afghan border in the south-western city of Quetta, long known as a base for militants.

The capture of an alleged al-Qaida militant inside Pakistan has become rare in recent years: most targets of CIA operations in the country have been killed by drone aircraft in a relentless series of operations which have taken place since 2008.

“This operation was planned and conducted with technical assistance of United State Intelligence Agencies with whom Inter-Services Intelligence has a strong, historic intelligence relationship. Both Pakistan and United States Intelligence agencies continue to work closely together to enhance security of their respective nations,” the military said.

Pakistan claims al-Mauritani was mainly responsible for al-Qaida’s international operations and was tasked by bin Laden with hitting targets of economic importance in America, Europe and Australia. It said he was planning to target gas and oil pipelines, power generating dams and oil tankers by using explosive-laden speed boats in international waters.

It named the other two detainees as Abdul-Ghaffar al-Shami and Messara al-Shami.

Since the 2001 attacks, Pakistan’s spy agency has co-operated with the CIA to arrest scores of al-Qaida suspects, most of whom were handed over to the United States.

Many top al-Qaida commanders are still believed to live in Pakistan, and getting Islamabad’s co-operation in cracking down on the network has been a major goal of Western powers since 2001.

But there have been persistent suspicions that Pakistan’s security services were protecting militants.

The fact that bin Laden had apparently been living for several years at a compound near an army base close to the capital, Islamabad, before his death, and the fact that the operation was conducted by US Seals without involvement from Pakistani authorities, led to fresh doubts over the state’s commitment to tackle the problem.