ARREST OF KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMAD: How
significant?
by B Raman
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, described by Maj. Gen.Rashid
Qureshi, the media spokesman of Gen.Pervez Musharraf, as "the
kingpin of Al Qaeda", was arrested by the Pakistani intelligence
officials from the house of the son ( Abdul Qadoos) of a local
women's leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), at Rawalpindi on
March 1,2003, and handed over to the officials of the US intelligence
community based in Pakistan. The latter immediately air-lifted him to
the US naval base in Diego Garcia for interrogation.
2. It is understood that an Arab and the Pakistani son
of the JEI leader were also arrested by the Pakistani authorities during
the raid. While the arrested Pakistani has not been handed over to the
US officials, it is not clear as to whether the Arab is also now
in US custody.
3. According to details available so far, during the
interrogation of two members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) arrested in
Karachi last month on a tip-off from some members of the Kashmiri Shia
community of Karachi hailing from Gilgit, the intelligence officials
came to know of the whereabouts of another wanted LEJ terrorist, who had
taken shelter in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. He too was then
arrested and questioned. He is reported to have revealed that Khalid was
staying with him, but had managed to escape just before the raid. He
gave the address of the JEI leader's son in Rawalpindi as one of the
likely places where he might have taken shelter.
4. The house in Rawalpindi was raided thereafter and
Khalid and the Arab were arrested. Khalid had first come to notice in
1995 when he was reportedly involved, along with Ramzi Yousef,formerly
of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the political wing of the LEJ, in a plot
for a series of terrorist attacks directed against US airlines and other
American interests. Khalid and Ramzi Yousef, described as Khalid's
nephew, had drawn up the plot from a hide-out in Manila where they had
taken shelter after the involvement of Ramzi in the explosion at the
World Trade Centre at New York in February, 1993. Following an
accidental fire in their hide-out, which drew the attention of the
Filippino authorities to their presence and activities in Manila, they
escaped to Pakistan. While Ramzi was arrested by the Pakistani
authorities and handed over to US officials for trial in the World Trade
Centre explosion case in which he was convicted along with others and
sentenced to life imprisonment, Khalid had been absconding since then.
5. Accounts emanating since 9/11 from US intelligence
officials and some non-governmental counter-terrorism experts known for
their proximity to the US intelligence agencies, who generally reflect
in their analyses the views of the US intelligence, have been projecting
Khalid as the real action man of Osama bin Laden and as the man who
orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US. In an interview to
the Al Jazeera TV in the last week of April, 2002, Khalid and Ramzi
Binalshibh, a Yemeni member of Al Qaeda, had bragged about their role in
9/11 and Khalid, during his talk with Al Jazeera correspondent, was
reported to have introduced himself as the head of Al Qaeda's Military
Committee. The correspondent had reported that he interviewed them in a
hide-out in Karachi.
6.US Intelligence officials then organised a hunt for
them in Karachi and, through electronic intercepts, managed to locate
their hide-out, which was raided by the Pakistani authorities on
September 11, 2002. During an exchange of fire lasting about four hours,
Khalid managed to escape, but Ramzi Binalshibh was captured and
airlifted to Diego Garcia for interrogation. According to US officials,
he was also to have joined in the hijacking of the aircraft in the US on
9/11, but could not do so since he could not get a US visa.
7. Since then, US officials have been hunting for
Khalid. Since 1995, the following six terrorists, involved in acts of
terrorism against US nationals and interests, have been among those
arrested in Pakistan:
* Ramzi Yousef, involved in the World Trade Centre
explosion of February,1993.
* Mir Aimal Kansi, involved in the murder of two
officers of the CIA outside their office in Langley, USA, in
January,1993. He has since been executed in the US after his conviction
in the case.
* Sheikh Omar, involved in the kidnapping and murder
of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist in January-February-2002. He
actually surrendered to a former official of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), who was then posted as the Home Secretary of
Punjab in Lahore.
* Abu Zubaidah, described by US officials, as the
No. 3 man in Al Qaeda, after the death of Mohammed Atef during the US
air strikes in Afghanistan. He was arrested from a hide-out of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan at Faislabad in Punjab on March
28,2002, and flown to Diego Garcia.
* Ramzi Binalshibh arrested in Karachi on September
11, 2002.
*Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
8. Under the Pakistani laws, anyone arrested in Pakistani
territory for a criminal offence has to be produced before a local
court, tried for any offence pending against him in Pakistan and then
only deported or extradited to any foreign country for facing trial in
that country. The Pakistani authorities strictly followed this procedure
in the Daniel Pearl case and have till now refused to hand over
Sheikh Omar to the US authorities. He has been sentenced to death by a
Pakistani court, but his appeal against the death sentence has not yet
been disposed off. Their refusal to hand him over to the US for
interrogation and trial in the US is due to his past linkages with the
ISI, his self-confessed role as the king-pin of the ISI's
terrorist operations in Indian territory and his reported claim, as made
to the Karachi Police during his interrogation, that during a visit to
Kandahar before 9/11 he had come to know of Al Qaeda's plans for the
9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and had passed on the information to
Lt. Gen. Ehsanul Haq, the present Director-General of the ISI, who was
then the Corps Commander in Peshawar. The Pakistani authorities were
worried that if he made these disclosures to the US interrogators, the
US might be constrained to act against Pakistan.
9. In the case of the other five, the Pakistani
authorities had no hesitation in informally handing them over to US
officials without following the due process of law since they were
apparently confident that these five were unlikely to implicate Pakistan
in any acts of terrorism during their interrogation by US agencies.
Sheikh Omar was an UK resident of Pakistani origin and Abu Zubaidah, a
Palestinian. Binalshibh is a Yemeni and the other three are stated to
beYemeni-Balochis, of mixed Yemeni-Balochi parentage. There is
considerable confusion about the nationalities of Ramzi Yousef and
Khalid. Some past reports that they were Kuwaiti nationals had been
denied by the Kuwaiti authorities. Pakistani authorities had denied that
they were Pakistani nationals. Ramzi Yousef entered the US as an Iraqi
national fleeing persecution from the Saddam Hussein Government,
participated in carrying out the explosion and fled the US with a
Pakistani passport issued by the Pakistani Consulate in New York. From
this, sections of the Pakistani media used to refer to him and Khalid as
Pakistani nationals of Iraqi origin.
10. When Abu Zubaidah was arrested, US officials had
projected him as the most significant catch which was likely to disrupt
future Al Qaeda operations. Their claims were belied by the series of
terrorist strikes thereafter in Pakistan and othert countries. Similar
claims made after the arrest of Binalshibh were belied by the terrorist
strikes in Bali and Mombasa.
11. The fact that neither of them could help in the
prevention of the terrorist strikes that followed showed that while they
might have been knowledgeable about the acts of terrorism of the past in
which they had participated, they had little knowledge of the operations
planned for the future. This is because the operations of bin Laden's
International Islamic Front (IIF) after 9/11 are being planned and
carried out by the dregs of the various components of the IIF acting
autonomously without any central planning and co-ordination. Even though
bin Laden had claimed responsibility for these terrorist strikes in his
Al Jazeera broadcast of November 12, 2002, it is uncertain whether
he himself had any advance knowledge of these strikes by different local
units of the IIF. It is doubtful whether the arrest of Khalid
would cause any major disruptions in the operations of the dregs of the
IIF spread out in Asia. Claims that his arrest could deliver a serious
blow to terrorist operations in S. E. Asia are unduly over-optimistic and
unwarranted.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for
Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Advisory Committee,Observer
Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
