An al-Qaeda suspect was killed and another arrested in Pakistan, and authorities tried to determine on Thursday if the detained man is a Syrian who has a multimillion-dollar bounty on his head and once taught militants at Osama bin Laden's terror camps in Afghanistan.
Intelligence officials said a third man, linked to a Pakistani extremist group, was also captured in Tuesday's raid on a shop that was also the office of an Islamic charity linked to a hardline militant group.
The raid was in Quetta, capital of Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan.
"I can only confirm that there was an encounter, and our security forces arrested one suspected al-Qaeda terrorist while another terrorist was killed," said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.
He said it would "take some time" to confirm their identities.
Authorities were investigating whether one of the suspects is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, 47, a Syrian native who also holds Spanish citizenship, said a senior government official.
Intelligence officials said that the detained man has been "tightlipped and very uncooperative" during interrogations.
The US Justice Department has offered US$5 million for information leading to Nasar's arrest, describing him as an al-Qaeda member and former trainer at terrorist camps in Afghanistan who helped train extremists in using poisons and chemicals.
The department's Rewards for Justice Web site also says he is probably in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Media reports have linked Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, to the Mar. 11, 2004, Madrid bombings that left 191 people dead and more than 1,500 injured, and to this year's July 7 bombings in London that left 56 people dead, including the four bombers.
Police in Madrid said they have no confirmation that the suspect under arrest is Nasar. London's Metropolitan Police and the Home Office could not immediately comment on Britain's interest in Nasar.
Intelligence officials in Quetta said authorities got a tip that al-Qaeda members were visiting the shop, and decided to launch the raid on Tuesday.
Residents in Quetta's Sarki Road neighborhood said they saw Pakistani intelligence agents raiding the shop and dragging some men into a vehicle when gunshots rang out.
A witness, Mohammed Salahuddin, said some passers-by were hit, and one of the arrested men -- whose face had been covered with a black hood by the intelligence agents -- was bleeding.
"I was buying something when security officials suddenly entered the shop and overpowered two or three people. When they were throwing them in two vehicles, I heard gunshots and some passers-by fell down," Salahuddin said. "I don't know who opened the fire."
There was no official confirmation that any passers-by were injured in the raid.
An intelligence official in Quetta said the al-Qaeda suspect who died in the shootout was a Saudi named Sheikh Ali Mohammed al-Salim. The official said al-Salim had been living with Nasar.
He said the third man was a suspected member of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamic militant group allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.
US Embassy officials said they could not confirm the arrests.
Bari Dad, owner of the property where the raid took place, said he had rented the shop to a man he identified as Abdul Hanan. Dad said Hanan had also used it as an office for the Madina Trust, a Pakistani charity that is linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Another resident, Nizam Din, said he believed Hanan -- apparently the third suspect mentioned by intelligence officials -- had links with Jaish-e-Mohammed, and helped recruit fighters for the wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS