May 08, 2005

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’
Christina Lamb and Mohammad Shehzad Islamabad



THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last
week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in
the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts,
however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command,
as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the
flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.
Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described
in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama
Bin Laden.



Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief
planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of
state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in
Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts,
who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted
list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice”
programme.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over
the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the
Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times
contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information
about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby,
the wrong man.

“Al-Libbi is just a ‘middle-level’ leader,” said Jean-Charles Brisard,
a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism
finance. “Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated
his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator
between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

According to Brisard, the arrested man lacks the global reach of
Al-Qaeda leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s number two,
Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, or
Anas al-Liby.

Although British intelligence has evidence of telephone calls between
al-Libbi and operatives in the UK, he is not believed to be Al-Qaeda’s
commander of operations in Europe, as reported.

The only operations in which he is known to have been involved are two
attempts to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, in
2003. Last year he was named Pakistan’s most wanted man with a
$350,000 (£185,000) price on his head.

No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had
heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year
claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh
Mohammad’s arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in
London laughed: “What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee
and do the photocopying.”

What is known is that al-Libbi moved from Libya to Pakistan in the
mid-1980s before joining the jihad in Afghanistan. He married a
Pakistani woman and is said to specialise in maps and diagrams. He is
thought to have joined Bin Laden in Sudan with other Libyan nationals
in about 1992 and to have become Al-Qaeda’s co-ordinator with
home-grown Pakistani terrorist groups after 9/11.

Some believe al-Libbi’s significance has been cynically hyped by two
countries that want to distract attention from their lack of progress
in capturing Bin Laden, who has now been on the run for almost four
years.

Even a senior FBI official admitted that al-Libbi’s “influence and
position have been overstated”. But this weekend the Pakistani
government was sticking to the line that al-Libbi was the third most
important person in the Al-Qaeda network.

One American official tried to explain the absence of al-Libbi’s name
on the wanted list by saying: “We did not want him to know he was
wanted.”

Whatever his importance, al-Libbi is the sixth Al-Qaeda figure to have
been caught in Pakistan, suggesting that the country is now the
organisation’s centre of operations. The interior minister, Aftab Khan
Sherpao, conceded that Bin Laden and his deputy might be hiding in a
Pakistani city.

“But the capture of al-Libbi will have made them very apprehensive.
Whether big fry or small fry, they’re on the run, I can tell you
that.”

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last
week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in
the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts,
however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command,
as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the
flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.
Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described
in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama
Bin Laden.

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i normally try to stay out of the OT/political post, BUT: didn't W
give up on ABL a year or 3 ago? kind of like the WMD? the europeans
are still laughing about the press club, and W looking under the table
for WMD.....
Drifter...