Al-Qaeda Suspect Released by Pakistan

High Court Orders Freedom for Two Other Prisoners

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 21 -- An al-Qaeda operative suspected of involvement in plots targeting the United States and Britain spent more than two years in a secret prison run by Pakistan's spy agencies before he was released, a human rights group said Tuesday.

Muhammed Naeed Noor Khan, an engineer by training who served as a computer guru for al-Qaeda and conduit to the group's top commanders, was quietly freed by Pakistani officials in recent days -- three years after his capture in the eastern city of Lahore and subsequent disappearance. Khan never faced criminal charges, and Ali Dayan Hasan, a Pakistan-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, said evidence suggested he had been held for most of his three years at a secret detention center in Lahore operated by the Pakistani intelligence services.

Hasan said he interviewed two former inmates who were kept in cells adjacent to Khan's and who reported that he had been held there since late 2004. The former inmates reported being interrogated at times by U.S. investigators, but Hasan said it was unclear whether Khan had been as well.

The Pakistani government offered no explanation for Khan's release. But it appeared to be prompted, at least in part, by an aggressive campaign by Pakistan's Supreme Court to force the country's military and spy agencies to disclose the whereabouts of hundreds of missing terrorism suspects and political prisoners.

The court ordered two additional prisoners released on Tuesday, after the chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, earlier threatened to send a high-ranking official to jail if the government did not cooperate.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said Khan's release appeared to be his reward for cooperating with Pakistani investigators. Khan, the officials said on condition of anonymity, had provided information that helped thwart a terrorist plot to attack Heathrow Airport in London.

An engineering graduate from Karachi, Khan disappeared after Pakistani authorities announced his capture in July 2004. But officials never filed criminal charges against him and later denied he was in their custody when his family filed petitions in court seeking information.

Khan's release was announced in the Supreme Court on Monday, but the government did not say where he had been held or precisely when he was let go.

U.S. and Pakistani counterterrorism officials had portrayed Khan's capture as a major breakthrough in their fight against al-Qaeda. Information gleaned from laptop computers seized after his arrest enabled Pakistani and U.S. investigators two weeks later to track down Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an East African suspected of helping to organize the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Shortly afterward, information from the Khan investigation also led Scotland Yard detectives to Dhiren Barot, a British citizen accused of organizing a plot to bomb financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, among other plans.

In his autobiography published last year, the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, linked Khan to other al-Qaeda plots in Britain, including plans to bomb London's Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and subway system.

Although Ghailani was taken to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Barot was convicted last year in a British court, Khan's whereabouts had remained a mystery, and some human rights groups questioned whether he had been transferred secretly to U.S. custody.