Al-Qaida suspects interrogated in Pakistan

PAKISTANI investigators were interrogating six members of an al-Qaida cell yesterday and expected to glean information that would lead to the arrest of more members of the militant group, officials said.

The six, including a Yemeni believed to have been involved in the attack on the US warship Cole in Yemen in 2000, were arrested in a raid in Karachi on Tuesday when authorities also seized a big haul of explosives and weapons.

“They are being investigated and we expect more arrests,” said a senior Pakistani official who declined to be identified.

The six include Yemeni national Waleed Muhammad Bin Attash, alias Khalid Al-Attash, suspected of involvement in the October 2000 attack on the US warship Cole in Yemen. A suicide bomber in a small boat attacked the Cole in Aden port, killing 17 US sailors. Washington blamed al-Qaida, which has had many supporters in Yemen, Osama bin Laden’s ancestral home.

The government said in a statement more “revelations” were expected from the group. A media report suggesting bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, had been arrested, was dismissed.

“What comment do you want on such rubbish reports ... such reports deserve no comment,” he said. The Pakistani government said during the raid in which the six were caught, authorities found 330 pounds of high explosives, detonators, transmitters, time switches, arms and ammunition. Authorities said the group had been planning a major attack that had been averted.

In Washington, US President George W Bush said Al-Attash’s arrest was “another notable success in the war on terror. He’s a killer. He was one of the top al-Qaida operatives,” Bush said. “He is one less person that people who love freedom have to worry about.”

Pakistan says more than 400 members of al-Qaida and of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime have been arrested in Pakistan since the September 11 attacks, among them senior al-Qaida members Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks.