Pakistan issues $1m al-Qaida list

THE Pakistani government has offered rewards totalling more than $1m for information leading to the capture of six leading al-Qaida suspects.

The “most wanted” list appeared on the front page of two leading newspapers.

Rewards of 20m rupees ($340,000) each were placed on the heads of Abu Faraj al-Libbi and Amjad Hussain.

The pair are suspected of being the main planners of two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf last December.

A senior Pakistani security official told the AFP agency the government believed, Faraj, a Libyan, was ranked third in the al-Qaida hierarchy behind Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

The official said Faraj, alias Dr Taufeeq, replaced Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was captured in Pakistan in March last year.

“Faraj heads the international operational wing of al-Qaida, with the help of an Egyptian accomplice, Abu Hamza Rabia.”Apart from Faraj, those named are all Pakistanis. The president survived two attempts on his life, on December 13 and 25, 2003.

Amjad Hussain, alias Amjad Farooqi, has also been indicted for the kidnapping and killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002.

The BBC’s Zaffar Abbas in Islamabad says the other four are said to be members of two banned Islamic extremist groups that have close links with al-Qaida. He says it seems that all of the suspected militants are wanted for bomb explosions and other crimes committed within Pakistan rather than outside the country.

The rewards offer continues a government crackdown on al-Qaida that has led to the arrest of more than 60 suspects in Pakistan in the past month. The breakthrough was the arrest in mid-July of an alleged al-Qaida communication expert, Naeem Noor Khan.