Thursday, July 29, 2004

High Level Al Qaeda Leader Caught in Pakistan

The BBC reports:

Mr Ghailani has been indicted in the US over the bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, nearly six years ago.

[...]

Mr Ghailani is on the FBI's list of 22 "most wanted terrorists".

[...]

The BBC's Zaffar Abbas, in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, says the Pakistani security forces have killed or arrested several suspected Islamic militants in recent months.

But he adds that Mr Ghailani is the most significant Al-Qaeda suspect to be apprehended since the arrest of the mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, more than a year ago.

Well, I've never heard of him, but this is still good news. If he is as significant as all that, he may be able to lead us to more arrests.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan protests that he does not see grounds for a conspiracy theory in the timing of this arrest:
Pakistan gets a major al Qaeda figure the day of Kerry's speech. No I don't believe the conspiracy theories, but it doesn't help that TNR's John Judis predicted something quite close to this.

That's a good thing because the arrest was not on the same day as the speesh, but was actually made Sunday after a 24-hour standoff according the the CNN article he links to. Although, I suppose one could say that the timing of the announcement was suspicious if you were inclined to conspiracy theories ... unlike Mr Sullivan ... who isn't.

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