AL-QAIDA’S trademark is meticulously planned, simultaneous terror attacks on multiple targets that are timed to cause maximum effect.

The alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks used to be a playboy who liked lounging in five star hotels and once flew a helicopter over the office of a woman he was trying to impress.

The arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed could help unravel details of past and present terror plots in Southeast Asia, police who once hunted him in Manila said today.

An al Qaida agent suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks was in the Philippines in the mid-1990s, plotting terror and chasing women, Manila police said.

US officials received a warning in 1995 that Islamic militants were plotting to attack an American nuclear site and targets in Britain - but did not pass on the information to the agency overseeing nuclear facilities or to the plants themselves, it has emerged.