Suspect in bombing of embassies arrested

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has arrested a Tanzanian al Qaeda suspect wanted by the United States in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the interior minister said today. He said the suspect was cooperating and had given authorities “very valuable” information.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani — who is on the FBI’s list of 22 most-wanted terrorists and has a reward of up to $25 million on his head — was arrested Sunday in the eastern city of Gujrat with at least 15 others, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat said.

He said Ghailani has given authorities some useful information. Mr. Hayyat would not speculate on whether the suspect was planning any attacks in the United States or Pakistan.

“It would be premature to say anything about this, but obviously we have certain information [and] some very valuable and useful leads have been acquired,” he said.

Mr. Hayyat said Ghailani apparently had been living in Pakistan for some time, but it was not clear how long or how he entered the country.

“This is a big success,” he told Pakistan’s Geo television network. “As a result of our investigation, it became clear that he was a major figure wanted for the bombings.”

He said Ghailani was being held at an undisclosed location in Pakistan, but indicated that he might be turned over to U.S. authorities after investigations are completed. An intelligence official said he was being held at a facility in the eastern city of Lahore.

Ghailani is thought to have been born in early 1974 on Zanzibar, a semiautonomous archipelago off the coast of Tanzania on the African mainland.

The islands were once the seat of the Sultanate of Oman and remain 95 percent Muslim.

Ghailani dedicated himself to Islam and became a tabligh, or missionary. Although most tabligh practice moderate Islam, a growing minority travel the world, visiting mosques and preaching the hatred of Western culture that is the hallmark of radical Islam.

Ghailani was indicted on Dec. 16, 1998, in the Southern District of New York on charges relating to his role in the embassy bombings, which killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.

He is suspected of buying the truck used as the vehicle bomb in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Ghailani, who also goes by the names “Foopie,” “Fupi” and “Ahmed the Tanzanian,” also was one of seven al Qaeda suspects that the FBI and Justice Department had asked for help in finding in May in order avert a terror attack over the summer in the United States.

Pakistan had said earlier that some of the 16 suspects arrested Sunday were from Africa, but had not said whether they were linked to al Qaeda.

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is in charge of coordinating Pakistan’s counterterrorism effort, said Ghailani’s wife, an Uzbek woman, also was arrested, along with several of his children.

The suspects were captured by police and intelligence agents during a raid on a house in the industrial city of Gujrat early Sunday after a 12-hour shootout.

The authorities also recovered two AK-47 rifles, plastic chemicals, two computers, computer diskettes and a “large amount” of foreign currency at the home, where the suspects had moved last month.

Brig. Cheema said the raid was carried out based on information from a Pakistani militant suspect who was arrested in a separate operation in eastern Punjab province.

Pakistan, which became a key ally of the United States in its war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks, has arrested more than 500 al Qaeda suspects from different parts of the country. The arrests have included al Qaeda’s No. 3 leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah.

Almost all of the foreign suspects were handed over to U.S. officials.

Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri, are thought to be hiding in the rugged tribal frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but there has been no hard evidence on their whereabouts.