Word: pakistani
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...figures huddled beside the graveyard on the road that leads into the Pakistani town of Mardan seemed an unremarkable group, their identities obscured behind the head-to-toe burqas that local women traditionally wear. But these were no ordinary women--in fact, they weren't women at all. Instead, the burqas concealed a group of Pakistani commandos who were waiting last week for a killer. U.S. and Pakistani intelligence had received a tip that a suspected al-Qaeda operative would be traveling to Mardan disguised as a burqa-clad woman. Because any plainclothesmen seen grabbing a woman would attract...
Even more remarkable than how the burqa bust came about was the identity of the operative that Pakistani officials announced they had netted: Abu Faraj al-Libbi, 40, a Libyan believed to be al-Qaeda's third-highest-ranking official--and one of the few individuals who counterterrorism experts believe may have knowledge of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. But the arrest had barely been hailed by President Bush as a "critical victory in the war on terror" when the picture grew murky. According to an Islamabad intelligence source, the burqa-clad fugitive...
Everyone does agree that in al-Libbi, the Pakistanis have reeled in a big fish. U.S. and Pakistani sources think that al-Libbi has been in direct contact with bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and that al-Libbi was the mastermind behind two attempts to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. U.S. counterterrorism officials told TIME that the CIA suspects al-Libbi was involved in a terrorist plot timed to coincide with last November's U.S. presidential election, including "training and supporting people and planning to send operatives" who could slip into...
...bearded, heavyset man whose face is splotched by a skin disease, al-Libbi first developed ties with bin Laden in the early 1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan. According to a Pakistani intelligence source in Islamabad, al-Libbi became one of bin Laden's few trusted aides. After allegedly organizing the assassination attempts on Musharraf in 2003, al-Libbi fled to Waziristan, a mountainous area along the Afghan border that has long been outside the reach of Pakistani law. After the Pakistani army mounted an offensive in the region in March 2004, al-Libbi and other al-Qaeda...
...called Al-Zulfikar, which was dedicated to overthrowing the Zia regime. It was based in Afghanistan and rumored to have ties to Libya and Syria. Last year the two brothers were convicted in absentia for involvement in the 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines jet, during which a Pakistani diplomat was killed. Over the past 18 months, Shahnawaz was said to have given up his underground activities and become a partner in a fashionable Geneva restaurant. But French police said they found two revolvers and several forged passports in his apartment, along with the first draft of a book...