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

War Comes Home
the video footage, the men warned of the real battle to come. The
terrain where the video was filmed led to fresh speculation about
his whereabouts. Intelligence agencies believed it could be between
Pakistani Chitral and Kunar, across the border in Afghanistan.
In July 2004, Pakistani intelligence services received yet another
indication about bin Laden’s whereabouts. The information extracted
from some newly captured al-Qaeda operatives, including its
communication chief, Naeem Noor Mohammed Khan, had provided
the clearest idea about bin Laden’s possible presence in the tribal area.
The dragnet closed along the border with Afghanistan, but soon the
hunt went cold as the Saudi militant moved away from his suspected
hideout. Pakistani authorities believed it was the closest they had
come to capturing bin Laden. 44
Meanwhile, Pakistani intelligence agents did not have the vaguest
idea just how big a catch they had made when, on 12 July 2004, they
arrested a young computer wizard from Lahore. They first heard about
Naeem Noor Mohammed Khan after the arrest of Gun Gun Rusman
Gunawan, the brother of Hambali, the mastermind of the 2002 Bali
bombing. 45 The Indonesian, who was captured along with 11 other
Southeast Asian students, had spent four years at a seminary in Karachi
under a fake identity. Their interrogation led them to Naeem. Initially,
intelligence agents only knew that the computer engineer was doing
communication work for al-Qaeda.
When investigators examined his home computer, however, they
realized that Naeem was the key connection between bin Laden’s inner
circle, holed up in the mountainous terrain in Pakistan lawless tribal
region, and al-Qaeda operatives around the world. 46 The information
gleaned from his computer provided an unprecedented insight into
al-Qaeda’s inner workings. The trove of data recovered from Naeem’s
computer revealed al-Qaeda’s plan for fresh terrorist attacks against
the USA and Britain; specific targets included Heathrow airport in
London and top financial institutions in America. 47
A well-educated young man from a middle-class background,
28-year-old Naeem hardly fitted the profile of a hardened terrorist.
A computer whizz-kid who had abandoned a promising career for
the call to jihad, he became a crucial cog in al-Qaeda operations in
Pakistan. Naeem was lured into jihad when he was still a teenager
and had just got into Karachi’s top engineering university. 48 He came
into contact with al-Qaeda through an Arab operative, whom he met
in Dubai in 1997, during a family wedding. The bright, soft-spoken
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