KARACHI, Pakistan, Aug. 5 -- An intense Pakistani military operation directed at suspected al Qaeda hideouts along the Afghan-Pakistan border has led to the seizure of a number of al Qaeda suspects and the discovery of a cache of computer information that contributed to last weekend's decision to increase the terror alert in several U.S. cities, Pakistani officials said Thursday.
The Pakistani operation has employed sophisticated American eavesdropping technology and computerized identification systems, they said. Three wanted al Qaeda operatives have been arrested, and computer files were found with detailed surveillance reports on terrorist targets and information about the whereabouts of other al Qaeda members, according to the officials.
A Pakistani paramilitary soldier takes position in a bunker in the volatile Waziristan tribal region, near the Afghan border.
(Hafiz Wazir -- Reuters)
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The military effort has forced the fighters out of the rugged remote tribal areas, just inside Pakistan, and into more urban areas, where they are more visible and vulnerable to capture, they said.
The operation is being paid for with millions of dollars from the CIA, supported with equipment from the National Security Agency and carried out by Pakistani soldiers and intelligence units. It has netted more than 100 suspects in recent days, the officials said. Eighteen detainees have been identified by the officials as al Qaeda members, according to Faisal Saleh Hayat, Pakistan's interior minister.
"We have a bead on some people," a U.S. military officer said in a comment echoed throughout the U.S. government on Thursday.
The heightened security alerts in the United States came after data seized in Pakistan suggested that the group was targeting five financial buildings in New York, Washington and Newark.
One Pakistan intelligence official said: "U.S. assistance comes in the shape of incredible data and analysis based on electronic and signal intercepts of al Qaeda suspects all over the world. Their information is also based upon the detailed debriefing of the arrested suspects and a scientific follow-up of these debriefings held at unidentified locations."
In London, Scotland Yard announced the arrest of Babar Ahmad, a British subject of Pakistani descent, on a U.S. extradition request from the U.S. District Court in Connecticut. Ahmad, 30, is accused of soliciting funds and property through the Internet for "acts of terrorism in Chechnya and Afghanistan," including political murder between 1998 and the end of 2003, U.S. officials said. They said that Ahmad had been under surveillance for several years but that information obtained in other counterterrorism operations in the past week allowed them to make the arrest.
Late Tuesday, British authorities arrested 12 people, including a key al Qaeda figure, Eisa Hindi, and several others who have since been identified as members of the organization. According to U.S. officials, Hindi is suspected of helping to produce, before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the surveillance of the five buildings that led officials on Sunday to raise the terror alert level.
Also on Thursday, Saudi Arabia's security forces arrested a leading militant, Faris Zahrani, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television reported. The report said Zahrani did not resist when he was arrested in southern Saudi Arabia. Zahrani was on a list of that country's 26 top wanted militants with suspected links to al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, a Pakistani intelligence officer said that "there was a definite link" between a June 10 attack on a Pakistani corps commander, in which 11 troops were killed, and the arrest two days later of Mussad Aruchi, a suspected al Qaeda operative. The commander, Lt. Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat, was not hurt.
Aruchi is reportedly a nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks. Aruchi was arrested in Karachi on June 12. The operation was supervised by the CIA, and the agency provided crucial information indicating his location, Pakistani intelligence sources said.
Aruchi possessed information about U.S. financial targets as well as the names of his associates. He had old street maps of New York City and addresses of other significant buildings, along with a number of compact disks containing information useful to investigators.
Aruchi's arrest, according to Pakistani officials, led authorities to Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan in the city of Lahore on July 13. Khan's e-mail traffic has helped lead authorities to other al Qaeda suspects.
