KARACHI - The circumstances surrounding the arrest in Pakistan and handing
over to US authorities of a man said to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, a
reportedly leading member of al-Qaeda, raise a number of important issues,
not the least of which is the credibility of the US in its "war against
terror".
Khalid himself is shrouded in mystery. He was reported to have been killed
in Karachi in a bloody shootout with Pakistani security forces on September
11, 2002 (See A chilling inheritance of terror) and there is dispute over
whether or not he was one of the key planners of the September 11 attacks
on the US a year earlier.
There is even doubt over Khalid's nationality. Some say he is Pakistani,
others that he is a Kuwaiti. Certainly, though, he does appear to be of
Pakistani origin, probably Baloch, and raised in Kuwait. He is thought to
have been in Pakistan for about two-and-a-half years, well before September
11, 2001.
Pakistani and US intelligence officials were alerted to his presence in the
country when he gave an interview to the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television
station shortly before the first anniversary of September 11. On the
strength of intercepted communications through ordinary mobile phones as
well as satellite telephones, the net closed on Khalid.
Dead or alive?
According to an official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),
Khalid was followed from somewhere in the eastern district of Karachi to
the Defense Housing Authority (Phase II, commercial area), situated in the
southern part of the city near Clifton beach. There he entered a two-storey
building, which was then surrounded by ISI and Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) officials. They were joined by hundreds of police
vehicles and Pakistan Rangers. The total number of law enforcement agents
at that time was 1,000 or more.
The following is a reconstruction of events that were widely reported in
the Pakistani print and electronic media, and information gathered from
intelligence sources.
The building stands alone, with no access to the ones next door. Initially,
a few plainclothed officials (including a major of the ISI and a civilian
inspector) entered the building and urged the people inside to evacuate. A
grenade was then thrown, which injured the major and the inspector, forcing
them to retreat.
Fresh troops then entered the building, and a fierce gun battle broke out.
At this point, according to an eyewitness, a car carrying a few "white
people" was seen speeding away from the scene. Tear gas was then fired into
the building, and the shooting subsided.
Pakistan Rangers along with many plainclothed officials and police surged
into the building and fired at two men in one of the flats, who were
standing with their hands up. One of these turned out to be Ramzi
Binalshibh, who had wanted to join the 19 hijackers for the attacks on the
US but who had been unable to get a US visa. He was taken into custody.
Nine other suspected terrorists were captured, and two were killed. A woman
FBI official examined the bodies, and, as reported by an ISI official,
suddenly exclaimed, "You have killed Khalid Shaikh Mohammad." The woman
then instructed that a finger be cut off the body, which she took away,
presumably for a DNA test.
Khalid's wife and child were taken away to an ISI safe house in the
vicinity where they were interrogated by the FBI, and it is said that the
woman identified one of the bodies as Khalid. Several weeks after this
incident, the then interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, stated in the
country's largest Urdu-language newspaper that Khalid's widow had been
handed over to Egyptian authorities.
Apparently, neither of the bodies was buried, a departure from usual
custom, and they were kept in a private mortuary operated by the Edhi Home,
a charity organization. After several weeks, some women, said to be widows
and mothers of those killed in Kashmir and Afghanistan, launched a protest
in front of the mortuary for the bodies to be handed over.
Again, according to Pakistan print media reports, these protest turned into
big demonstrations which forced the authorities to issue a statement that
the bodies had been buried in a local, unidentified, graveyard.
ISI officials close to the case at this time were convinced, as were the
FBI, that Khalid had been killed. But they chose not to disclose the death
as they wanted other al-Qaeda members to attempt to remain in contact with
him through the recovered satellite telephones, mobile phones and laptop
computers.
Sources who had been involved in the shootout and subsequent events were
taken off all al-Qaeda operations, and then the FBI stopped using the ISI
offices in Karachi and moved into a separate building where one ISI colonel
and a major were deployed for coordination purposes only.
After this, reports began to emerge that the FBI agents were claiming that
they had intercepted calls from Khalid himself, originating in Karachi, and
they were insisting that he was alive.
On the basis of these intercepted calls, a raid was conducted in the
outskirts of Karachi on the suburb of Gulshan-I-Maymar, a thinly populated
region, especially Block W, where, after some heavy gunfire, several Arabs
were arrested.
The next day, some Pakistani authorities claimed in newspapers that one of
the people who had escaped, although injured, was Khalid. People in the
neighborhood who witnessed the siege, though, say that with the building
surrounded and more than 600 police and Rangers in attendance, it would
have been very difficult for anyone to escape. After this, Khalid's name
seldom made the news as the US-Iraq issue grabbed the headlines.
Back in the news
Then it was announced that on March 1 that Khalid had been captured during
a raid on an apartment in Rawalpindi, the sister city of the capital,
Islamabad.
First reports said that he had been handed over to the US, who took him to
their military base at Diego Garcia. This was denied, and there were
reports that the US had been given someone other than Khalid. Later, he was
said to be in US custody at Bagram airport in Afghanistan.
In Pakistan there have been reports described as coming from Taliban
sources - members of the former government in Afghanistan who are now
hiding in Pakistan, who deny that Khalid has been captured. One says, "We
know exactly where the guy they're claiming to have captured is."
According to the local media, Khalid was seized while in the house of one
Ahmed Abdul Qudoos, who, it turns out, is a mentally feeble person - he is
also being held in custody as an al-Qaeda member - and as such receives a
regular stipend from a United Nations organization.
"It was published in the national press on the very first day after this
raid that the police conducted two raids in Rawalpindi and arrested Arabs.
I believe that they arrested these people from some other location and
showed them arrested at the residence of Ahmed Abdul Qudoos, who is a
relative of a leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami's women's wing," the chief of
the Jamaat-i-Islami, Karachi, Dr Merajul Huda, told Asia Times Online.
The Jamaat-i-Islami is Pakistan's most prominent Islamic party and a part
of an ultraconservative coalition that gained an unprecedented number of
seats in last October's elections, largely on the strength of a virulently
anti-American platform.
On Tuesday, Pakistani authorities officially admitted the handover of
Khalid. "We do not know what he has done, but since we are convinced that
he is KSM [Khalid Shaikh Mohammad] we have handed him over to a country
[US] where he is wanted," said Pakistan's Information Minister, Shiekh
Rasheed Ahmed.
On the first anniversary of September 11, the Bush administration was under
fire over poor results in its "war on terror", with no significant arrests
having taken place. Precisely on September 11, 2002, the drama involving
Khalid and Ramzi Binalshibh began unfolded in Karachi.
Now, at a time when the US is likely to have to delay its war on Iraq a
little longer due to Turkey's about-turn on US troops in its country and
the upcoming UN vote, another coincidence occurs involving Khalid.
Clearly, no one has the final word on whether Khalid is dead, was captured
earlier, or is still free.
What can be expected though, are reports establishing some degree of Iraqi
involvement with al-Qaeda operations, and stepped up operations across the
world against that network. For if this does not happen, the Khalid arrest
could be seen as just one more hoax in the US-led "war on terror".
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EC06Df04.html