Arrest is 'big setback' for al-Qaida

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.

Mohammed, the suspected September 11 mastermind, was captured on Saturday in Pakistan and is believed to be in US custody.

“This is a big setback, a vacuum in leadership that would affect al-Qaida’s plans for now,” Philippine police intelligence director Roberto Delfin said.

Filipino authorities stumbled on one of the first troves of information about Mohammed when they found an al-Qaida hide-out in Manila in 1995 and seized a laptop computer that contained his only known pictures and other data.

Mohammed was in the Filipino capital in the mid-1990s, allegedly to direct the operations of an al-Qaida cell that plotted to bomb US airliners and assassinate Pope John Paul, who visited Manila in 1995, Delfin said.

The cell was led by his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted of conspiracy for his part in the first World Trade Centre bomb attack in 1993.

Western and Philippine intelligence agents believe Mohammed masterminded and funded planned suicide bombings of the US and Israeli embassies in Manila two years ago.

Those terror plans were later shifted to Singapore because of tight security at the embassies in the Philippines, they said.

But the Singapore bomb plots also fell through when local authorities tracked down and arrested suspected members of the militant Jemaah Islamiyah group who were allegedly to carry out the attacks, the officials said.

A confidential Western intelligence report, shared with the Philippine government, said Mohammed allegedly directed and provided funds in August 2001 to suspected al-Qaida operative Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, who allegedly directed the bombing plots in the Philippines and Singapore on al-Qaida’s behalf.

Jabarah was arrested in Oman last year, then transferred to detention in the north-eastern United States.

“The arrest of Mohammed will hopefully fill up the gap and loose ends in our information on terrorist plans, previous and future,” Delfin said.

A naturalised Pakistani who was born in Kuwait, Mohammed, 37, is on the FBI’s most-wanted list and allegedly had a hand in many of al-Qaida’s major attacks. The US government had offered a reward of up to $25m (€23.14m) for information leading to his capture.

Rodolfo Mendoza, a former top police intelligence official who led a group that hunted for Mohammed and Yousef in Manila, said Mohammed projected himself to people as a classy Middle Eastern businessman fluent in English while plotting terror attacks in the shadows.

While allegedly directing terrorist plots in the Philippines, Mohammed took scuba diving lessons with Yousef, lounged at coffee shops in Manila’s five star hotels and once flew a rented helicopter over the clinic of a Filipino dentist he was courting to impress her, Mendoza said.

Delfin said Mohammed also sold carpets on the side.

“We didn’t know if it was his lifestyle or a cover, but the guy was certainly smart,” Mendoza said.

The al-Qaida hide-out in a Manila apartment was accidentally discovered when smoke billowed out the window of Yousef’s room as he and a companion allegedly mixed bomb ingredients, Mendoza said. Yousef escaped and was eventually arrested in Pakistan. His companion, Pakistani Abdul Hakim al Hashim Murad, was arrested by Philippine police.

During interrogation in Manila in 1995, Murad allegedly confessed that his group had discussed the idea of hijacking planes and crashing them into a US federal building, Mendoza said. He said that Philippine intelligence officials had relayed the information to US authorities as a precaution.

Mendoza said Mohammed’s arrest would deeply hurt but not stop al-Qaida from launching future attacks.

“The most important thing is that it was demonstrated that the most important operatives of al-Qaida could be tracked down and arrested when the United States and other governments cooperate,” Mendoza said.

“It also gives us a feeling that capturing Osama bin Laden is not an impossible thing.”