Pakistani security agents denied yesterday that an American al-Qaeda spokesman wanted in the US for treason had been arrested, saying there had been confusion over the identity of a detained suspect.
Some Pakistani officials had said on Sunday that Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam with a US$1 million US bounty on his head, had been arrested on the outskirts of Karachi.
A senior government official and two security agents, however, said yesterday that the suspected al-Qaeda operative picked up in Karachi was not Gadahn.
PHOTO: AFP
“Our initial impression was that the guy was Adam Gadahn, but that information now looks incorrect,” said one security official, who declined to be identified.
The arrested man was believed to be an American who goes by the alias Abu Yahya, the officials said. Gadahn is known to have used a similar alias.
“Probably the name and his origin caused the confusion,” the first official said.
He declined to speculate about the identity of the arrested man except to say he was apparently an American al-Qaeda operative.
“We don’t know yet how big a catch he is,” he said.
Pakistan is battling indigenous, al-Qaeda-linked Taliban militants and has resisted US pressure to launch military offensives against Afghan Taliban factions based in rugged ethnic Pashtun lands on its northwestern border.
While ruling out another big offensive soon, Pakistan has arrested several senior members of the Afghan Taliban in recent weeks, including a top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Islamabad, apparently nervous of a public backlash in a country where anti-US feeling runs high, has only officially confirmed Baradar’s arrest.
Gadahn has been involved with al-Qaeda’s as-Sahab media wing and has appeared in al-Qaeda videos wearing robes and a turban and warning the US that it would face attacks if it did not heed al-Qaeda demands.
On Sunday, a video was released on Islamist Web sites in which Gadahn called for Muslims in the US to launch attacks to undermine the economy, a Web site that monitors al-Qaeda announcements said.
The FBI has been seeking to question Gadahn since May 2004.
The 2006 treason charge against him carries a maximum punishment of death.
Separately, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander linked with al-Qaeda who the government said last week may have been killed in a Pakistani air raid telephoned a Reuters reporter to say he was alive.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Saturday that senior Pakistani Taliban commander Faqir Mohammad may have been among 16 insurgents killed when helicopter gunships attacked a militant hideout in the Mohmand region on Friday.
“I’m fine. It’s just propaganda,” said the man on the telephone who identified himself as Mohammad. The reporter has spoken to Mohammad before and said he recognized his voice.
“I was in Bajaur, not Mohmand that day. None of our commanders were killed in the attack. We lost some fighters and women,” the man purporting to be Mohammad said, referring to another region on the Afghan border.
Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber struck a building where police interrogate high-value suspects in Lahore yesterday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 61 more including women taking children to school, officials said.
The attack broke what had been a relative lull in major violence in Pakistan.
No group immediately claimed responsibility.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion