Pakistan on Friday said it would not consider extraditing a senior Al Qaeda suspect until it finishes questioning him, and a government official said the arrest showed Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network was "crumbling."
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was giving authorities "very valuable" information, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat said Friday.
Ghailani — who is on the FBI's list of 22 most wanted terrorists, with a reward of up to $25 million on his head — was arrested Sunday in the eastern city of Gujrat along with at least 15 other people, Hayyat told The Associated Press.
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However, he said, the arrest of Ghailani was a "great blow to the Al Qaeda" network of bin Laden.
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"This is a major breakthrough which the Pakistani intelligence and security agencies have achieved," the interior minister said in a speech to parliament later Friday, adding that anti-terror operations would continue until "we purge Pakistani society of these extremist and terrorist elements."
Ghailani may be able to shed further light on the 1998 embassy bombings or have information about terror cells or Al Qaeda operatives, particularly in east Africa, the official said on condition of anonymity.
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Ghailani, who also goes by the names "Foopie," "Fupi" and "Ahmed the Tanzanian," was also one of seven wanted Al Qaeda suspects that the FBI and Justice Department asked for help in finding in May to help avert a possible terror attack over the summer in the United States.
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Pakistan, which became a key ally of the United States in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in America, has so far arrested more than 500 Al Qaeda suspects from different parts of the country.
They included Al Qaeda No. 3 leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was arrested in March 2003 during a raid in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad. Almost all the foreign suspects, including Mohammed, were later handed over to the U.S. officials.
Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah, two other Al Qaeda leaders, were also arrested in Pakistan.
When Kerry and the Dims babble about how the US under Bush isn't "respected" or "loved" by the countries of the world since war began on 9/11, I think of nation-states like Pakistan, with whom we've never had such a terrific working relationship and Pakistan is slowly but steadily working its way to becoming a secularized democracy instead of an Islamic military dictatorship.
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