Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

1 0 Frontline Pakistan
Pakistani security forces had arrested several other al-Qaeda
operatives in subsequent raids on suspected terrorist hideouts in
different parts of the city, but missed the man they wanted to capture
most: KSM. They had to wait another five months before they could
get hold of him.
In the first week of February 2003, Pakistani police and intelligence
personnel finally nabbed KSM from a house in a middle-class
neighbourhood in Pakistan’s western border city, Quetta. 35 But his
detention was kept secret for a month to buy time to track down other
terrorists. On 3 March, Pakistani authorities announced that they had
arrested KSM from a house in Rawalpindi’s Westridge district. The
delay and deliberate concealing of the actual place of arrest had borne
fruit: the subsequent capture of a dozen other al-Qaeda militants.
The pre-dawn raid on the Westridge house of a woman leader of
Pakistan’s largest mainstream Islamic political party, Jamaat-i-Islami,
produced another important catch: Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, a Saudi
Arabian national, who was accused of bankrolling the 11 September
attacks. Hawsawi, who initially identified himself as a Somali,
allegedly funded the hijackers through bank accounts in the United
Arab Emirates. He was also believed to be al-Zawahiri’s financier, as
well as being indicted in the United States on two counts of terrorism.
In Quetta, the police also nabbed Mohammed Abdur Rehman, the son
of the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in New York in 1995. 36
KSM was apparently tracked by intelligence agencies for four weeks
before his capture. Pakistani security forces had earlier captured his
two young sons, Yousuf al-Khalid and Abed al-Khalid. They were
detained in September 2003, after a raid on an apartment in Karachi’s
Defence Housing Society, which was used by KSM as a hideout. The
al-Qaeda operational chief narrowly escaped arrest, while his sons
were found hiding in a third-floor, two-bedroom apartment. Pakistani
authorities believed that the arrest of his young sons would force KSM
to surrender. It didn’t happen. The boys were reportedly flown to the
USA after their father’s arrest. Among the items found in his possession
was a photograph of a smiling KSM with his arms around his sons. 37
KSM’s capture was the biggest coup in the US war on terror. Ranking
number three in the al-Qaeda leadership, he was also the head of
the military operations wing of the terrorist network. His central role
in al-Qaeda planning began to unfurl after his arrest and interrogation.
Many of the past decade’s major terrorist incidents – and some
recently interrupted plots – were linked to a single, clannish al-Qaeda