9/11 arrested suspect is probably in Afghanistan

Pakistan said yesterday Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, was probably in Afghanistan after being handed over to US interrogators.

"He is somewhere in this region," Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters. "Most probably he is in Afghanistan."

The Islamabad government said he left Pakistan yesterday morning, though US officials said on Monday that Mohammed, their biggest catch so far in the global war on terror, was already in their custody outside the country.

US officials say Kuwaiti-born Mohammed was key in planning the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed about 3,000 people. They said on Monday they were racing to get information from him to foil any plans to attack US targets and to find out the whereabouts of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

US military officials would not say if Mohammed was being held at Bagram Air Base, the US headquarters north of Kabul. It has been used to question suspects before their transfer elsewhere, including to a US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"It has been long-standing policy to not give out names or nationalities of detainees," said Major Robert Hepner, a US military spokesman at the base.

Pakistani officials say Mohammed was arrested on Saturday with two other al Qaeda suspects in Rawalpindi near Islamabad. One was Pakistani and sources in Washington identified the other as Mustafa Ahmed al-Hasawi, who was believed to be Saudi.

Rashid told Pakistan TV the other foreigner was also handed over to the United States, but did not identify him.

The Washington Post reported late last year Bagram was one of several facilities the Central Intelligence Agency used to interrogate suspects. Being outside the United States, it was not subject to US rules of due process and interrogators used "stress and duress" techniques on prisoners which blurred the line between the legal and the inhumane, it said.

Citing intelligence sources familiar with CIA methods, it said uncooperative captives were sometimes kept hooded in painful positions, and deprived of sleep.

The US military denied reports of torture at the centre and said it was run by the army, not the CIA.

Another regional interrogation centre is a US Indian Ocean base on the British island of Diego Garcia, while more than 600 al Qaeda suspects are being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Omar Samad said Mohammed's capture in Rawalpindi showed terror suspects had hid in Pakistani cities rather than the rugged Afghan border region.

The Muslim fundamentalist Taliban allowed al Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan and gave it shelter before being overthrown by a US-led coalition in late 2001.

Mohammed's arrest boosts Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's relations with the United States but could increase his difficulties with Islamic parties at home.

Pakistan's largest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami called Mohammed a hero of Islam, and accused the government of a shameful sell-out to the United States.

Taliban supporters said the arrest would not hurt al Qaeda. Former Taliban commander Qari Abdul Wali said the network would miss "an important soldier", but would not scatter or weaken.

Mullah Abdul Samad, a former Taliban intelligence officer, said Mohammed's capture would not yield information about whereabouts of bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Samad, who spoke from an undisclosed location, said others had been trained to take the places of operatives who fell.

"In al Qaeda, every mujahid (holy warrior) is no less than Osama bin Laden," he said.