Al-Qaida suspects handed over to US and flown out of Pakistan

FIVE al-Qaida suspects were handed over to US authorities and flown out of Pakistan yesterday.

A Pakistani official said that alleged September 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was among the suspects. It was not revealed where the suspects were being taken.

The five were arrested in raids last week in this teeming port city, marking a major success in the US-led war against terrorism. Binalshibh, 30, is believed by the FBI to have intended to be the 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks, but he was unable to enter the US. Instead, he provided logistical help to the operation and funnelled money to his former roommate, Mohammed Atta, believed to have been the leader of the suicide hijackers.

Binalshibh was a member of the al-Qaida cell in Hamburg, Germany, that US and German investigators believe planned and carried out the September 11 attacks.

Binalshibh boasted of his role in planning the September 11 attacks during an interview in Karachi with the Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera. Earlier yesterday, another government official said police were investigating whether suspects arrested with Binalshibh were involved in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. If a link were established, it would be the first evidence that al-Qaida may have been involved in Pearl's abduction and killing.

Because of Binalshibh's connection to Hamburg, Germany's interior minister said Saturday that he would ask for his extradition from Pakistan. On Sunday, however, the minister, Otto Schily, said that, given the "terrible attacks of September 11" took place on US soil, "it goes without saying that Americans have priority for his extradition."

Sending Binalshibh first to Germany would have complicated efforts to hand him over to the US, since EU nations refuse to extradite suspects to the US if they can face the death penalty.

Ashcroft, who was in Belgium to speak at a conference, said the German decision was comparable to the US position to let Pakistan prosecute the suspects in the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Pakistani authorities said they would prosecute a key suspect first before deciding whether to hand him over to the United States: "The United States respected the Pakistan desire to move forward with that prosecution," Ashcroft said. "It is in that context that we see the kind of mutual understanding about the way in which we can handle cases in which more than one nation or jurisdiction has an interest."