PAKISTAN: AL QAEDA TERRORIST KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED ARRESTED IN RAWALPINDI WITH TWO ASSOCIATES FOR MASTERMINDING SEPTEMBER 11TH ATTACKS.

Record ID: 352121

  • Title: PAKISTAN: AL QAEDA TERRORIST KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED ARRESTED IN RAWALPINDI WITH TWO ASSOCIATES FOR MASTERMINDING SEPTEMBER 11TH ATTACKS.
  • Date: 1st March 2003
  • Summary: (U3) UNKNOWN LOCATION (FILE) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. CU: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS (FBI) TEN MOST WANTED WEBSITE SHOWING STILL PICTURES OF KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED, COVERED BY RED STAMP SAYING "LOCATED" 0.08 2. CU: COLOUR STILL PHOTOS OF KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED, ONE WITH THICK BEARD, ONE WITH TRIMMED BEARD, COVERED BY RED STAMP SAYING "LOCAT
  • Embargoed: 16th March 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: UNKNOWN LOCATION AND RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Reuters ID: LVA8OLUTWESS3DL8ELCPXLVDGCWY
  • Story Text: Pakistan has handed over to the U.S the suspected
    mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
    in what U.S. officials hailed as the biggest catch so far in
    the global war on terror.



    After a decade on the run, the suspected mastermind of
    the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was in U.S.

    custody on Sunday (March 2) in what U.S. officials hailed as
    the biggest catch so far in the global war on terror.

    Pakistani officials said Mohammed, branded by Washington
    as one of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's "most senior and
    significant lieutenants", was arrested by Pakistani agents at
    a house in the city of Rawalpindi before dawn on Saturday
    (March 1).

    A Pakistani official said Mohammed was handed over to U.S.

    custody and taken to an undisclosed location within hours of
    his arrest.

    Analysts said Mohammed could be the key to finding bin
    Laden.

    It was not known if the man described by counterterrorism
    experts as having been behind almost every major terror attack
    in the last decade had been taken to Afghanistan, a military
    base in Cuba where other suspected al Qaeda are held, a U.S.

    ship or flown to the United States or a third country.

    The White House said Mohammed, one of three al Qaeda
    suspects detained in the early morning swoop, was "a key al
    Qaeda planner and the mastermind of the September 11 attacks".

    Officials said the others were a Pakistani and a foreign
    national of Arab origin. An intelligence source described the
    third man as an Egyptian national, but gave no other details.

    However, the family of the arrested Pakistani, Ahmed
    Quddus, said he was the only person detained in a raid by 20
    to 25 security men armed with Kalashnikov rifles on their home
    in Westridge, a middle-class area of Rawalpindi at 3.30 a.m.

    on Saturday (2230 GMT Friday).

    Qudsia, who said she was Ahmed Quddus' sister, said she
    had come to the house to comfort Quddus' wife.

    "Late last night, in the middle of the night at 3 o'clock,
    20 to 25 people raided the house - we can't say anything else
    at this point - raided the house, they just banged open doors,
    broke the locks and they pushed my sister-in-law and her kids
    into a room and held a rifle or Kalashnikov to their head,"
    Qudsia told Reuters.

    Some analysts questioned whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
    had actually been arrested on Saturday and speculated he may
    have been held for some time and the news made public when it
    was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan.

    Analysts describe Mohammed, a Kuwaiti in his late 30s, as
    a pivotal figure in al Qaeda who vetted all its recruits and
    who may know the whereabouts of both bin Laden and Mullah
    Mohammed Omar, fugitive leader of Afghanistan's former Taliban
    government.

    Washington had put a 25 million U.S dollar price on his
    head and he was one of 22 people on the FBI's list of "most
    wanted terrorists".

    The September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington
    by hijacked airliners killed about 3,000 people.

    Mohammed was indicted in the United States in 1996 for his
    alleged role in a plot to blow up 12 American civilian
    airliners over the Pacific.

    He is also suspected of involvement in the bombing of U.S. embassies
    in Africa in 1998 and the attack on a U.S. warship, the USS Cole,
    in Yemen in 2000.

    Mohammed was born in Kuwait, but his family is from
    Baluchistan, a Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan.

    He is an uncle of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, now serving a life
    sentence for involvement in the 1993 bombing of New York's
    World Trade Center, later destroyed in the September 11
    attacks.

    Mohammed studied in the United States, but moved to
    Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar in the late 1980s
    where he and his brothers are said to have linked up with bin
    Laden.

    They say he travelled the globe as a key al Qaeda
    recruiter and coordinator and since the September 11 attack is
    believed to have moved between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Hundreds of al Qaeda members and their Taliban allies are
    thought to have crossed into Pakistan after U.S.-led forces
    began hunting for them in Afghanistan and overthrew the
    Taliban
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