Al-Qaida fugitive detained by Pakistan

A top al-Qaida leader whose links stretch from Afghan terror training camps to extremist networks operating throughout Europe has been captured in Pakistan, according to a US law enforcement official.

Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a Syrian who also holds Spanish citizenship, was captured in a November 2005 sting operation in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta that left one person dead, said the American official.

Pakistani officials said today that Nasar has since been flown out of the country to an unspecified location.

The American official, who spoke to The Associated Press late last week, said Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, may now be in US custody but did not specify where. He declined to comment further.

Pakistan says it has arrested about 750 other al Qaida suspects in the past four years, and most of them have been handed over to the US.

Nasar had a €3.9m bounty on his head.

US military officials aware of the detention of terror suspects at American prison facilities in Bagram, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had no immediate information on whether Nasar had been incarcerated at either jail.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official said Nasar had been flown out of Pakistan to an undisclosed destination “some time ago”.

“I only know that he is not here. But, I do know that Syrian authorities had also requested to get him back,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his work.

Pakistani and American officials have long been tight-lipped about the status of Nasar. He has been described by the US Justice Department as a former trainer at Osama bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan who helped teach extremists to use poisons and chemicals.

Another Pakistani official confirmed the Quetta arrest but had no information on Nasar’s whereabouts.

“He had been interrogated by us. He had been interrogated by our American friends,” said the official, who also declined to be identified because of the secretive nature of his activities. He added that both Syrian and US authorities wanted to take Nasar into custody.

A picture and short biography of the red-haired Nasar was recently removed from the US government’s Rewards for Justice website.

Justice and State Department officials declined to say why Nasar was no longer profiled.

Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said Nasar’s capture would be a major blow to the al Qaida movement as he was the “most prolific writer” of jihadi propaganda and held close links with extremists throughout Europe and South Asia.

“The ideologues are as equally important as the operational people and he was in close contact with very prominent figures with movements in different countries, particularly the North African region,” said Gunaratna.

In 2004, Nasar released a 1,600-page book titled “The International Islamic Resistance Call,” which lays out strategies for attacking Islam’s enemies.

He lists those as “Jews, Americans, British, Russian and any and all of the Nato countries, as well as any country that takes the position of oppressing Islam and Muslims,” according to a translation from the Washington-based SITE Institute.

Among the other key terror suspects Pakistan has handed to the United States are al-Qaida’s former No3 leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, who was arrested in March 2003 during a raid near Islamabad, and his purported replacement, Abu Farraj al-Libbi, who was detained in May 2005 in Pakistan’s north-west.

Media reports have linked Nasar, who holds Spanish citizenship, to the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people, and to the July 7, 2005, attacks in London that left 56 dead, including the four bombers.

In September 2003, Nasar was among 35 people named in an indictment handed down by a Spanish magistrate for terrorist activities connected to al Qaida. His exact role, if any, to either the Madrid or London bombings is unclear.

He is also wanted for a 1985 attack on a restaurant near a military base close to Madrid airport that left about 20 people dead – regarded as the first international Islamic terrorist attack to take place in Spain.

Spain’s ambassador to Pakistan, Jose-Maria Robles, said Spain had sought information from Pakistan about Nasar’s reported arrest in November but had received no reply.

“Pakistan knows our interest but we have not had any official answer,” he said in Islamabad today.

Nasar, who lived in Spain and was married to a Spanish woman, also stayed in London during the mid-1990s before travelling to Afghanistan where he was believed to have been part of bin Laden’s network, a Western diplomat in Islamabad said.

His movements have been traced to Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and at least two European capitals.