Pakistan says Al Qaeda men gave 'strong information'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-03 00:31

Pakistani security services got a lot of information from two al Qaeda men captured recently, a government minister said Monday, but he refused to confirm reports this had led to a security alert in the United States.

U.S. media reports said information gleaned from Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and a computer expert named by the New York Times as Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, also known as Abu Talha, prompted a high level alert against a possible attack by al Qaeda on financial institutions in New York and Washington.

Members of the New York City Police Emergency Services Team guard the New York Stock Exchange August 2, 2004. Intelligence warnings of al Qaeda threats to attack the New York Stock Exchange, World Bank and International Monetary Fund prompted the United States on Sunday to issue a 'high' level threat alert for financial institutions in New York and Washington. [Reuters]

Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said a computer expert had been arrested but refused to name him or draw any link between what his interrogators had discovered and the alert in the United States.

"We have arrested a computer expert, but I have said nothing about the information that he gave to us," the minister said. "All I have said was that we arrested one man and learned some strong information from him."

He also said the capture of Tanzanian-born Ghailani, wanted for his role in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people, had given intelligence officers more material to work on.

"We have got some very important information out of Ghailani," he said.

Ghailani, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, was captured last weekend along with 13 others, including three women and five children, after a shootout in the city of Gujarat, 175 km (110 miles) southeast of Islamabad.

Police also seized a computer and several discs in the operation, intelligence sources said.

Ghailani and his comrades had been hiding out in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal lands, but fled after an army offensive against foreign Islamic militants and their supporters among local tribes.

According to the U.S. reports, the computer expert had been caught earlier in July.

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