Pakistan Says May Have Al Qaeda Deputy Surrounded

dod

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=CKEYNHC3W3LGMCRBAEKSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=4599648&section=news

SLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan forces may have al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri surrounded in a remote tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, a Pakistani government official said on Thursday.

"A pitched battle is going on there. The way these people are resisting, we think there is someone important over there. We think al-Zawahri may be holed up there," the official told Reuters.

Earlier, President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistani troops believed they had surrounded a "high value target" during a battle with militants loyal to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"(Judging by) the resistance that is being offered by the people there, we feel that there may be a high value target," Musharraf told CNN.

Musharraf, who said he had spoken to a military commander, declined to speculate on the identity of the target.

"They are giving fierce resistance, so he (the commander) is reasonably sure there is a high-value target there," Musharraf said.

Asked if it could be bin Laden or Zawahri, Musharraf said: "I am not going to say that because my previous experience is that whatever I say, headlines come that 'he says Zawahri is there, or Osama'. I can't. It would just be a guess.

"But I think that very likely there is a high value target. Who I don't know."

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

dod

From the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1560834.stm

Profile: Ayman al-Zawahri
Ayman al-Zawahri, an eye surgeon who helped found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group, is often referred to as Bin Laden's right hand man and the chief ideologue of al-Qaeda.

He is believed by some experts to have been the "operational brains" behind the 11 September attacks in the United States.

He was number two - behind only Bin Laden - in the 22 Most Wanted Terrorists List announced by the US Government in 2001.

Some experts even suggest that Zawahri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad virtually took over al-Qaeda, when the two groups forged a coalition in the late 1990s.

He was reportedly last seen in the eastern Afghan town of Khost in October 2001, and went into hiding after the US-led attack overthrew the Taleban.

Various sources have said he may have escaped to North Africa or the Midle East, but US officials believe he is still hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border area.

Financial control

To say that Dr Zawahri is Bin Laden's right-hand man may be to understate his importance, according to Giles Foden, author of a book on the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Mr Foden says some analysts believe Dr Zawahri has been controlling much of al-Qaeda's finance operations since the end of the war in Afghanistan.

The Egyptian is named in European legislation on financial sanctions against the Taleban and in documents produced by the US sanctions body, the US Treasury's office for foreign assets control.

Distinguished family

Born in Egypt in 1951, Ayman al-Zawahri, comes from a middle class family of doctors and scholars.

His grandfather, Rabi'a al-Zawahri, was the grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar university, a centre of Islamic learning in the Arab world.

He was already involved in Egypt's radical Muslim community when he was arrested at the age of 15 for being a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood - the Arab world's oldest fundamentalist group.

He graduated from Cairo University's medical school in 1974 and obtained a masters degree in surgery four years later.

His father, who died in 1995, was a pharmacology professor at the same school.

Radical youth

Dr Zawahri was tried along with scores of radical Islamists for their part in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat during a Cairo military parade.

He was convicted and served a three-year sentence for illegal possession of arms. After his release, he left for Saudi Arabia.

Soon afterwards he headed for Peshawar and later to neighbouring Afghanistan, where he established a faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group.

Dr Zawahri was in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in 1970s and 1980s, working as a doctor.

In 1997, the US State Department named him as leader of the Vanguards of Conquest group - a faction of Islamic Jihad thought to have been behind the massacre of foreign tourists in Luxor the same year.

Two years later, he was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian court for activities linked to Islamic Jihad.

Dr Zawahri reportedly spent six months in the Russian custody for his alleged extremist activities in the southern republic of Dagestan.

But he was released as his name was not known to Russia's secret services.

Western targets

Dr Zawahri is believed to have lived in Denmark and Switzerland in the early 1990s, sometimes travelling on a false passport.

Giles Foden says Dr Zawahri's freewheeling role across western Europe during the early 1990s raises questions about the security and asylum policies of a number of European nations and about their refusal to act on information provided by the Egyptian Government.

Dr Zawahri appeared in a video alongside Bin Laden threatening retaliation against the United States for the detention of the Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Then, in 1998, he was the second of five signatories to Bin Laden's notorious 1998 "fatwa" calling for attacks against US civilians.

He is also listed on the US Government's indictment sheet for the 1998 US embassy bombings.

He was one of the figures whose satellite telephone conversations were used as proof that Bin Laden was behind the plot.

ReefBreak

In the unfortunate event that he's captured, we're working out a way that we can somehow put an anti-American spin on the events - we've got our best people on it.

Regards,
R. B. Barrett, and the rest of the Marxist anti-war comrades.

sovtek

Originally posted by ReefBreak
In the unfortunate event that he's captured, we're working out a way that we can somehow put an anti-American spin on the events - we've got our best people on it.

Regards,
R. B. Barrett, and the rest of the Marxist anti-war comrades.

Nice pre-emptive ad hominem.

Sand

Theres no real evidence theres anyone there, beyond the guys theyre fighting are resisting a lot. Theyre fundamentalist fanatics - theyd be letting the whole side down if they didnt fight to the death.

If they are fighting hard to protect a "high value target" then it implies the capture/death of that person would be a blow to al Queda if only its morale.

On a related note the Al queda boys have apparently said Bin Laden and his deputy are alive and well in afghanistan, as they also confirmed when rumours of bin ladens death were widespread last year. It makes you think that the coalition could encourage rumours of Bin Ladens death or capture to force al Queda to keep on "proving" hes alive and free, maybe pushing them to reveal a bit too much information in the process.