Pakistan turns over suspect in USS Cole bombing

The Washington Post

KARACHI, Pakistan — A Yemeni microbiology student wanted in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole was secretly handed over to U.S. authorities by Pakistan’s intelligence agency early Friday, Pakistani government sources said Saturday.

Pakistani officials said the student, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, 27, is an active member of the al-Qaida terrorist organization, which is run by Osama bin Laden, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Mohammed’s arrest by Pakistani intelligence officers and handover to U.S. authorities — which bypassed the usual extradition and deportation procedures — was the result of a broad investigation by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials into the activities of Arab students who are suspected of having ties to al-Qaida, the sources said. In recent weeks, U.S. and Pakistani officials have engaged in unprecedented collaboration to identify potential al-Qaida members operating in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi, the country’s largest city and its commercial capital.

Mohammed is the first person captured outside Yemen for the October 2000 bombing of the Cole as it refueled in the port of Aden. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 others aboard the destroyer were injured when suicide bombers pulled alongside in a skiff and detonated their explosives.

The arrest of Mohammed, whom one Pakistani official called "a solid al-Qaida asset," could provide one of the most direct connections between bin Laden and the Cole bombing. U.S. officials have linked bin Laden to the attack but have not announced a definitive relationship.

Mohammed arrived in Pakistan in 1993 from Taiz, Yemen, to study microbiology at the University of Karachi, said Iftikhar Maqvi, the university’s foreign student adviser. But in 1996, he was asked to leave after failing to qualify for the honors program in which he had enrolled, Maqvi said.

Later that year, Mohammed was arrested by Pakistani authorities in connection with the November 1995 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, sources said. He was released without being charged. Ayman Zawahiri, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization and a close associate of bin Laden, was convicted in absentia in Pakistan for involvement in the bombing.

Mohammed was handed over to U.S. authorities under highly secretive circumstances. According to Pakistani sources and a security official at Karachi International Airport, he was brought to a little-used section of the airfield in a rented white Toyota sedan by masked agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Mohammed was handed over to several U.S. officials who arrived aboard a Gulfstream V jet, witnesses and officials said. Pakistani officials said there were no formal deportation or extradition proceedings. The plane’s destination was not known.

Intelligence officials believe Pakistan has served as a key transit country for Afghan-based extremists as well as a base of operations for them because it has a communications, transportation and financial infrastructure that Afghanistan lacks. Pakistan’s intelligence officials also have had longstanding links with the Taliban, which has harbored bin Laden and many of his operatives since 1996.

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