Herald news services
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – A last-ditch effort by Pakistan to persuade Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden failed Friday when a group of militant Islamic clerics flew back to Pakistan and reported that the Taliban’s leader had dismissed any possibility of a handover.
And in London, authorities said an arrested Algerian pilot was the lead flight instructor for some of the hijackers involved in the attack on the Pentagon and took at least one of them on a flight this summer from Nevada to Arizona.
In the United States, Attorney General John Ashcroft said authorities now have arrested or detained about 500 people.
The Taliban rebuff was as blunt as any the Taliban leader has given since President Bush demanded the surrender of bin Laden. It appeared to exhaust one of the few remaining hopes – perhaps the last hope – that the Taliban would bow to the threat of an American military attack, although Pakistan said it would not give up its efforts to change the mind of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
Statements by the Pakistani clerics Friday night indicated that a day of prayers with Omar, and hours of talks resting on floor cushions and sipping tea and pomegranate juice with the Taliban chief, had achieved nothing likely to deter American operations to capture or kill bin Laden and his associates in their network, al-Qaida.
In London, Lotfi Raissi, 27, who was arrested on Sept. 21, is the first overseas suspect that officials have directly linked to the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
“He was a lead instructor of four of the pilots that were responsible for the hijackings,” prosecuting attorney Arvinda Sambir said in Magistrates Court on Firday. She said prosecutors believe he helped train the hijackers who crashed a jetliner into the Pentagon.
Sambir said that Raissi made several trips to the United States this summer, trained with several of the suspected hijackers and flew with one of them on June 23 from Las Vegas to Arizona.
He will remain in custody in London pending an additional hearing scheduled for Oct. 5. U.S. authorities have 60 days to file an extradition request, British officials said.
U.S and European authorities are zeroing in on a small group of men in England, Germany and the United Arab Emirates believed to have plotted the Sept. 11 attack and provided assistance to the hijackers, U.S. officials said Friday.
One of those sought is a man in the United Arab Emirates who was mailed a package from Mohamed Atta, the suspected leader of the hijacking teams, one official said. The package contained money and documents and was mailed by Atta a few days before he hijacked a plane in Boston and flew it into the World Trade Center.
The information about the origins of the hijacking plot emerged as the Justice Department announced that more than 480 people have been arrested or detained in the probe.
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