Shamsul Islam Naz

Faisalabad recently caught world attention with the arrest of top Al-Qaeda members, including their chief Abu Zubaidah. The city is still attracting the Western media members who are roaming around the places where the FBI and Pakistani law-enforcement agencies had jointly conducted an operation.

The strategy of keeping the operation low key by hiding the whereabouts and details of the arrested Al-Qaeda members has succeeded. Their names could not be ascertained by any of the media men despite hectic efforts.

Incidentally, when the new tenants moved in the big house off Canal Road late February, word spread that they were Arab traders in the import-export business, supplying shirts and sheets to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It was a credible cover in an industrial city dominated by textile factories.

For the first time, American agents directly took part in the raids conducted by special teams at six different places in the city last Thursday to arrest the “most wanted terrorists” of the world. Separate raids were conducted on various houses by joint teams of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the assistance of sensitive agencies and the Elite Force in which over two dozen alleged Al-Qaeda members were rounded up. A shootout also occurred during a raid in Faisal Town in which a top leader of Al-Qaeda, Abul Hasnat, was gunned down.

The raiding team arrested Abu Zubaidah, claimed to be the mastermind of the New York incident. Two other “terrorists” also sustained injuries but they were rounded up with other accomplices claimed to be of Arab origin. Two constables – Mubashar Husain and Muhammad Jawed – of the Elite Force also sustained injuries when the alleged Al-Qaeda members put up resistance.

An interesting revelation made during the operation was that the hideout of the alleged suspects of Al-Qaeda was believed to have been detected by a special cell of the American FBI and CIA whose personnel were monitoring and deciphering round-the-clock all e-mail messages from the gadgets, scanning the air and satellite signals.

This cell reportedly got the clue of an e-mail message “electrified” by the inmates of the hideout on March 13, 2002. Immediately after intercepting the message, spies of this cell started hunting the place to catch hold of a secret e-mail message.

In line with the agreement between the US and Pakistan for the exchange of intelligence, the US cell reportedly passed on the information to the ISI, and it was decided to launch a joint operation for capturing Al-Qaeda members from Faisal Town. To implement the plan, the US personnel reached the city on March 27 at 11am and they remained busy with the law-enforcement agencies in various meetings for launching the operation.

After completion of this “top secret operation”, FBI teams and local police officials shifted all the alleged Al-Qaeda leaders arrested from various parts of the city to Islamabad through special planes for further interrogation. Later, the injured terrorists were also shifted to Islamabad under tight security.

It is said that during the raid on the hideout of alleged terrorists by the special team, Abu Zubaidah tried to escape from the scene by jumping towards an adjacent bungalow. But a local police commando overpowered him and one of his accomplices without using any weapon. FBI agents identified Abu Zubaidah despite the fact that he was not in the getup shown in his photographs carried by the raiding team. He looked clean shaved with small hair in the pictures. But at the time of arrest he had long hair and wore glasses and a sleeping-trouser.

It is being claimed by the secret agencies that Abu Zubaidah was the right hand man of Osama bin Laden, and had been trying to regroup Al-Qaeda leaders and other militant groups after the reported death of Aiman-uz-Zehwari, deputy of Osama.

Abu Zubaidah, a Saudi born of Palestinian parents, had first come to Pakistan in 1987-88 to join Jihadi organizations working against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Peshawar’s Criminal Investigation Department first arrested him in April, 1994. Investigators had recovered several copies of passports of different countries and $12,000 in cash. He was charged under the Foreigners Act but was bailed out after which he fled to Afghanistan. He was one of the main associates of Osama bin Laden for training youngsters and planning future targets.

The FBI and Pakistani agencies said they had found certain code words inscribed in the kitchen wall during the raid on the Al-Qaeda men’s hideout on Canal Road such as “Friday: Dawood and Abu Kamel”, “Saturday: Osama and Anees”. Similarly, words Lahi, Sabhoo, Murad, Al-Mujahid, Asad and Badar.