Two key Qaeda suspects arrested in sweep, Pakistan says
US has bounty on one detainee
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Government forces have arrested two "high-level" Al Qaeda suspects, one with a multimillion dollar US bounty on his head, widening a sweep against Al Qaeda's vast web of operatives that has netted at least six suspects, officials said yesterday.
Among those detained in the past two days were a policeman accused of passing information to Al Qaeda militants, a Syrian arrested at a bus stop, and a man carrying suspicious documents who was seized trying to fly out of the country.
Officials said the suspects, who were not identified, are believed to be linked to a militant already in custody who provided crucial intelligence leading to the arrest of a top fugitive last week and to Washington's issuing a warning Sunday of terror threats to US financial institutions.
Pakistan's interior minister said the arrest of the high-ranking targets in eastern Punjab province was a major break only days after agents caught Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the Tanzanian sought by US officials for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
"In addition to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, whose bounty was $25 million, we have captured another most-wanted suspect with a bounty on him running into the millions of dollars," Faisal Saleh Hayyat told reporters in the capital.
He said both men were of African origin but refused to identify them or their nationalities.
Four Egyptians and a Libyan on the FBI's list of 22 most-wanted terrorists are believed to be in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Each has a $5 million bounty on his head in connection with the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.
Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, is from Egypt. He and the Al Qaeda chief are believed to be hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border, far from Punjab province.
The arrests have come with stunning swiftness since the capture in Karachi on July 13 of an Al Qaeda computer specialist identified as Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was allegedly sending coded e-mails to other operatives. An intelligence official said Khan led authorities to Ghailani, who was captured after a 12-hour gunbattle in the eastern city of Gujrat.
Intelligence gained from Khan's and other arrests was said to be a major factor in US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's decision to issue a warning Sunday about a possible Al Qaeda attack on prominent financial institutions in New York, Washington, and Newark.
Pakistani officials are also pointing to the arrest in June of Masrab Arochi, the nephew of Al Qaeda's former third-in-command, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, as providing useful intelligence.
