Pakistan Mum on Identity of High-Value Al-Qaida Targets

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBGFR2EHXD.html

Aug 4, 2004

Pakistan Mum on Identity of High-Value Al-Qaida Targets
By Paul Haven
Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani officials remained tightlipped Wednesday about the identities of two high-level al-Qaida terrorists they arrested in recent days, saying they would release no more information until an investigation is complete. Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat announced the arrests of two al-Qaida suspects of African origin - one with a multimillion dollar bounty on his head - late Tuesday, but he refused to name them. He said they had been arrested in the past three days.

Meanwhile, a Lahore-based intelligence official said that two of the dozen or so people arrested along with al-Qaida fugitive Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani on July 25 were from South Africa. He identified the men as Feroz Ibrahim and Zubair Ismail, and said they were planning attacks in their home country. <snip>

Another Lahore-based intelligence official said authorities believe the men wanted to target tourist sites in Johannesburg, South Africa's commercial center. The men are believed to have arrived in Pakistan on a flight from the United Arab Emirates just days before their arrest.

It is not believed they are the same men as the high-value targets referred to by Hayyat, because there are no South Africans on the FBI most wanted list with bounties, and the men were not arrested in the past three days. Still, the arrests were considered significant

And trumpeted as major coups were really small fish, according to the Israelis:

http://www.debka.com/article_print.php?aid=885

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror experts are skeptical about the sourcing of the intelligence which prompted the terror alert - declared Sunday at five financial bastions in New York, Washington and New Jersey - to Pakistan’s two newest al Qaeda captives, the Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, caught on July 25, and the Pakistani Muhammed Naeem Noor Khan, apprehended on July 13.

US Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge made a point of thanking Pakistan for its intelligence assistance in forewarning against terror attacks, naming the IMS and World Bank in Washington DC, the New York Stock Exchange and Citicorp and Prudential in New Jersey at targets. But ascribing the “unusually specific information” to these two detainees in Pakistani custody poses questions.

Ghailani fled to Afghanistan after the 1998 twin US embassy bombings in East Africa and reached Pakistan after US troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001. He remained in hiding among low-ranking al Qaeda adherents from then on without holding any important jobs in the organization.

Khan is equally improbable as al Qaeda’s present communications manager. According to DEBKAfile’s terror experts, the use of coded Internet and e-mail messaging for transmitting signals and orders was more or less abandoned from mid-2001, months before the 9/11 attacks. Since then, messengers and personal couriers have carried most of al Qaeda’s coded messages, usually without knowing what was in them or even the identities of the recipients.

The two men are not of the usual a Qaeda caliber for preparing a complex, spectacular attack in the United States - or even acting as the top level’s repositories for the necessary foreknowledge. Only very limited information must therefore have been elicited from the two men detained in Pakistan and their computers:

that the news is being manipulated -- and pakistan is playing as many corners as it can.
i will NOT be surprised if they come up with osama before nov.
musharref has escaped too many assasination attempts -- i don't even believe those.