A senior al-Qaida suspect wanted in connection with two assassination attempts on the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, has been arrested, the country's information minister announced today.
"This is a very important day for us," Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said, but gave no details about the circumstances of the arrest of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan who authorities say is a close associate of Osama bin Laden, except to say that it took place earlier this week.
Mr Libbi is accused of involvement in two bomb attacks targeting Gen Musharraf in December 2003. The president escaped injury on both occassions, but 17 others were killed.
Gen Musharraf named Mr Libbi as the chief suspect in the bombings, and last year Pakistan's interior minster, Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, said Mr Libbi had financed the assassination attempts.
Security officials have described him as al-Qaida's operational commander in Pakistan, a role they believe he assumed following the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the group's alleged number three, on March 1 2003 arrest. Mohammed was later handed over to US authorities and his whereabouts are unknown.
The man believed to have masterminded the assassination attempts, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, was killed in a gun battle with security forces in southern Pakistan in September. Farooqi was identified as a senior member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant Sunni group believed to have connections to al-Qaida. He was also accused of involvement in the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002.
Three Pakistani intelligence officials told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Mr Libbi was one of two foreigners arrested on Monday after a gun battle on the outskirts of Mardan, 30 miles north of Peshawar, in Pakistan's deeply conservative North West Frontier province. One of the officials said authorities were led to the hideout by a tip off that foreigners had been spotted in the area.
Mr Libbi reportedly spent time in South Waziristan, a tribal region along the border with Afghanistan that is considered a likely hideout for bin Laden. But he fled following a series of military operations in the area last year. Authorities had said privately in recent weeks that they felt they were closing in on his location.
He is not on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list. Pakistan has arrested hundreds of terror suspects since Gen Musharraf ended the country's support of the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan after the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States. It has handed over about 700 al-Qaida suspects to the US.