Pakistan: The Footprints of Terror

2008

March 15: Dutch police have arrested a Pakistani man who they say is linked to a jihadi network which was largely dismantled after raids in Barcelona during January 2008, Dawn reported. The 26-year-old suspect was detained on March 13 in the south-western Dutch town of Breda, the public prosecutor's office said in a statement on March 14. The detainee was "suspected of belonging to a global jihadist network which prepares attacks in western Europe", the statement said. The police had been investigating the suspect, who was not identified by name, since late January 2008 acting on information of the security services in The Hague. The suspect, who had been in the Netherlands since September 2007, was enrolled as a student but mostly worked as a house painter, AFP reported.

February 15: A German man of Pakistani origin has been arrested in southwestern Germany on suspicion of working for al Qaeda, the office of the federal prosecutor said on February 15, according to Dawn. The suspect, identified as Aleem N., made four trips to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan where he handed over at least 4,000 euros to al Qaeda operatives each time, it said in a statement. The trips took place between April 2005 and June 2007, and also served to smuggle radio equipment and binoculars to the organisation, AFP reported. During the last trip, Aleem N. asked to become an al Qaeda fighter and was subsequently sent to a camp in Pakistan where he was trained to use explosives.

January 22: The group of alleged Islamist extremists arrested in Barcelona at the weekend were planning suicide attacks on Spanish soil allegedly under orders from al Qaeda in Pakistan, AFP quoted press reports as saying. Citing sources close to the investigation, the daily El Periodico de Catalunya said "the terrorist action averted on Saturday ... was decided several months ago by the central al Qaeda network in Pakistan… Those who gave the order are to be found in Pakistan. They were preparing suicide attacks. Those that came here were ready to commit suicide." The 12 Pakistanis arrested had made recent trips to Pakistan, according to the report. The group received an order to carry out an attack in Barcelona from figures high up within al Qaeda hierarchy during a meeting at a training camp in Waziristan. Announcing the arrests on January 19, Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba declared that an imminent attack by "highly organised radical Islamists" had been foiled.

2007

November 23: According to The News, a Pakistani man, who pleaded guilty to distributing terrorist propaganda and helping a terrorism suspect breach a control order, was jailed for six years on November 22 in Britain. 25-year old Abdul Rahman was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court to six years for dissemination of a terrorist publication and three years for aiding contravention of a control order, making him the first person to be convicted in Britain of such offences. He was also sentenced to six years for possession of an article for a purpose connected with the commission or instigation of an act of terrorism. Rahman was arrested in January 2007, two-and-a-half years after arriving in the country from Pakistan on a student visa to do a biotechnology course at university which he quit within days.

September 20: Two Pakistani nationals accused of channelling 1 million euros ($1.40 million) to Islamist militants were arrested in Spain, Reuters reported. A. Muhammad Shan and P. Mehmood Sandhu used money from drug trafficking to fund radical groups in Spain and abroad, a police statement said. They were detained in Madrid and Barcelona after a three-year operation by the Spanish National Police and the US Federal Bureau of Intelligence.

September 4: Three suspected Islamic militants were arrested in the afternoon for allegedly plotting attacks on Ramstein Air Base, a key U.S. and NATO military hub, and Frankfurt International Airport, one of Europe's busiest, German authorities said on September 5, according to an AP report. The Sudwestrundfunk public broadcaster, citing unnamed security officials, reported that two suspects had German citizenship while the third was Pakistani. Authorities closed in on the men after they were seen moving possibly dangerous chemicals, the Der Spiegel reported, citing unidentified investigators.

Danish police arrested eight young Muslims during pre-dawn raids in central Copenhagen and its suburbs on suspicion of plotting a bomb attack and having links with al Qaeda, according to The News. The arrested ranged from 19 to 29 years old. They were of Afghan, Pakistani, Somali and Turkish backgrounds and six were Danish citizens, Jakob Scharf, director of the Danish police's Security Intelligence Service said. He said it was the first such direct al Qaeda connection discovered in Denmark and that Danish intelligence had cooperated with unnamed foreign security services during an investigation that lasted several months. "These are Islamist militants with connections to high-ranking members of al Qaeda," Scharf told a press conference.

July 27: Five British Pakistani youths, accused of being "intoxicated" by extremist propaganda, were on July 26 jailed for planning to go to Pakistan to train as "jihadis" in order to fight British forces in Afghanistan, according to The Hindu. Four were university students, identified as Aitzaz Zafar (20), Awaab Iqbal (20), Usman Ahmed Malik (21) and Akbar Butt (20) - and the fifth a schoolboy, Mohammed Irfan Raja (19). All were found guilty of possessing terrorist material. They are to serve jail sentences ranging from two to three years each. During their trial at the Old Bailey, the prosecution claimed that the material seized during the investigation included an al Qaeda manual and diagrams of explosive devices. Their conversations on the net contained passages justifying suicide bombings, it was alleged. But the defendants denied these charges.

The alleged plot reportedly came to light when Raja ran away from his east London home in February 2006 leaving behind a note telling his parents that he would now meet them in "jannat" (paradise). In the note, he assured them that he was not going to do "something in this country". "Just in case you think I am going to do something in this country you can rest easy that I am not. The conventional method of warfare is safer," he reportedly wrote. Prosecution said Raja was recruited by the other four - all students of Bradford University - on the Internet.

July 26: More than a dozen Muslims, including at least one Pakistani and several US citizens of Pakistani-origin, have been sentenced to imprisonment for their association with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and for conspiracy to wage jihad against India, according to Dawn. A statement issued by the US Department of Justice on July 25 noted that the State Department designated LeT a terrorist organisation in December 2001. Although one of the convicts, 32-year old Sabri Benkahla, of Falls Church, Virginia, became a state witness, he too was sentenced this week to 121 months in federal prison, and ordered to pay a $17,500 fine. He was found guilty of perjury before the grand jury and of making false official statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including his denial of involvement with an overseas jihad training camp in 1999, as well as his asserted lack of knowledge about individuals with whom he was in contact.

Most of the convicts attended the Dar al Arqam Islamic Centre in Falls Church, Virginia. In June 2003, Benkahla and 10 others were indicted by a grand jury in Alexandria for conspiring to attack Indian troops in Kashmir and the Russians in Chechnya in the course of training for jihad in Virginia and Pakistan. Among the defendants, Masaud Khan, Seifullah Chapman, Randall Royer, Ibrahim Al-Hamdi, Muhammed Aatique, Yong Kwon, and Khwaja Hasan, were alleged to have attended jihad training camps operated by the LeT in 2000 and 2001. In September 2003, Khan and Royer were charged with conspiring to wage war against the United States, aid the Taliban, aid al Qaeda, and Khan, Royer, Chapman, and Hammad Abdur-Raheem were charged with providing assistance to the LeT.

July 21: According to a Reuters report, German authorities believe al Qaeda is targeting Germany for possible attacks and that German Islamists have been travelling to Pakistan for "terrorist training." Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, "The danger that there could be terrorist attacks here is very real… We have many indications that al Qaeda is targeting Germany and German installations abroad, such as embassies." Hanning, a former head of Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency, also said German Islamists were being trained in Pakistan. Three German Islamists who trained there returned to Germany at the beginning of June 2007, he disclosed. "We have to assume that the people who returned from Pakistan are planning attacks," he informed.

He said the Interior Ministry was aware of 14 Islamists who went to Pakistan, some of whom were still there. He added that Berlin believed that there were more Germans who had gone to "terrorist training camps" in Pakistan. In recent months, Pakistani authorities have detained at least seven German Islamists "who could have been involved in planning attacks", he disclosed. "We need to do everything possible to find out who went to Pakistan and was trained there," Hanning said.

July 12: Britain is investigating how the ringleader of a failed 2005 London bombing plot, identified as a possible terrorist, went to Pakistan for terror training, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on July 11, according to Dawn. Brown confirmed reports of the investigation after it emerged that Muktar Said Ibrahim, who was convicted along with three other defendants, had made the trip barely six months before the attacks, although he was on bail. The Woolwich Crown Court in London heard during the trial that Ibrahim travelled to a militant training camp in Pakistan in December 2004. He was there at the same time as Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, two of the four British nationals who later blew themselves up on the London transit system on July 7, 2005, killing themselves and 52 commuters.

May 29: : Spain's High Court convicted three Pakistanis for sending money to al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, but cleared them and eight others of preparing terrorist attacks in Barcelona, according to AFP. The suspects had faced up to 32 years in jail for alleged involvement with al Qaeda, drug trafficking and planning attacks on a shopping centre and other targets in the city, where they lived and were arrested in 2004. Following a three-month trial, the Madrid-based tribunal on May 29 acquitted them of terrorism charges for lack of evidence. The three men who sent money to al Qaeda operators received jail terms of five-and-a-half years for terrorist collaboration. Two others received six months each for falsifying documents. All of them were Pakistani nationals. One of the three found guilty of collaboration, Mohammad Afzaal, received an additional four years for drug dealing. The other two, Shahzad Ali Gujar and Chaudhry Mohammad, were found guilty for transferring more than 800,000 euros to radical Islamists in Pakistan.

May 28: A Pakistan-born US national accused of supplying military equipment to al Qaeda was extradited to the US on May 25, AFP reported. Syed Hashmi, aged 27, now faces a trial in the US over allegations that he was a "quartermaster" and supplied al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Syed Hashmi, an American national, has been extradited this evening from Gatwick airport to America," said a spokesperson for London's Metropolitan Police. Hashmi, who was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport in June 2006 as he boarded a flight to Pakistan, came to Britain on a student visa in 2003 and joined the Islamist group al Muhajiroun, which has now been disbanded. His extradition warrant alleged that he had received "military gear" for use in committing terrorist acts between January and March 2004. The United States District Court for the southern district of New York indicted him.

April 19: China for the first time publicly acknowledged the existence of terrorist camps within the territory of its 'all-weather' ally, Press Trust of India reported. It said that some East Turkistan separatists, who have been fighting for decades to make northwest China's Xinjiang province an independent state, received training at the terrorist camps in Pakistan. The damning confirmation came in a court document in the trial of 37-year-old Huseyin Celil, a China-born Uygur-Canadian, who was on April 19 sentenced to life imprisonment by a Chinese court in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, for "taking part in terrorist activities and plotting to split the country." According to court documents, Celil joined the East Turkistan Liberation Organisation (ETLO), a listed terrorist group active in central Asia, in November 1997 and was appointed as a senior instructor in Kyrgyzstan. While there, Celil allegedly recruited several people to the ETLO and sent them to terrorist training camps on the Pamir Plateau in Pakistan, the court documents said.

April 6: Three Pakistanis are facing life imprisonment after they were on April 5, 2007, charged in connection with the suicide attacks on London’s transport system on July 7, 2005, in which 52 persons were killed, according to The News. Mohammed Shakil, 30, of Beeston, a suburb of Leeds; Sadeer Saleem, 26, also of Beeston; and Waheed Ali, 23, who recently lived in London but was originally from Beeston, were arrested on March 22, 2007. Saleem was reportedly arrested in Leeds and the other two men were detained at the Manchester airport as they were preparing to board a flight to Pakistan. The three were charged under the Explosive Substances Act (1883) for "unlawfully and maliciously" plotting with the suicide bombers "to cause explosions on the Transport for London System and/or tourist attractions in London." "The allegation is that they were involved in reconnaissance and planning for a plot with those ultimately responsible for the bombings on July 7 before the plan was finalised," said Sue Hemming, head of the Counter Terrorism Commission of the Crown Prosecution Service.

April 4: A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, US and Pakistani intelligence sources told ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Christopher Isham. The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Balochistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran. The group has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials. US officials said US relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that US provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as Congressional oversight. Tribal sources told ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states. Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.

January 10: A Pakistani immigrant was sentenced to 30 years in prison for hatching an unsuccessful plot to blow up a busy Manhattan subway station as revenge for wartime abuses of Iraqis, AP reported. Shahawar Matin Siraj, aged 24, was arrested on August 27, 2004, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. Though there was no proof that Siraj ever obtained explosives or was linked to any terrorist groups, prosecutors said his intentions were dangerous since he wanted to blow up the Herald Square subway station. "I apologise for all the stuff I said on those tapes," Siraj said before he was sentenced. "I'm taking responsibility for 34th Street, but I was manipulated by this person." Siraj was convicted of conspiracy last year based partly on the testimony of a police informant, Osama Eldawoody, who was recruited to monitor Muslims at mosques and elsewhere following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

2006

November 30: A 29-year old Pakistani, with an expired student visa, and a US citizen were charged in Texas with conspiring to train with firearms to fight with the Taliban against coalition forces in the Middle East and providing $350 to support terrorist groups, according to Daily Times. The detained Pakistani was identified as Adnan Babar Mirza, while the 33-year old American has been identified as Kobie Diallo Williams a.k.a. Abdul Kabeer. The four-count indictment was returned by a Houston grand jury on November 22 and unsealed this week after the appearance of both men before a US magistrate judge. "While these subjects did not operate at a high level of sophistication in comparison with the 9/11 hijackers, the expressed goal was to aid the Taliban by training for jihad against coalition troops in the Middle East," according to FBI Special Agent Roderick Beverly.

According to allegations in the indictment, Williams and Mirza, a citizen of Pakistan who entered the US on a student visa on August 15, 2001, viewed the US and coalition military forces on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq as invaders, and in April 2005, agreed that they should travel to the Middle East to fight with the Taliban to engage in battlefield Jihad. To hone their skills in anticipation for battlefield Jihad, the indictment alleged that Williams and Mirza agreed to train with firearms at various locations.

November 7: Troops in eastern Afghanistan captured a "known Al Qaeda terrorist" who has ties to the network's leadership, and five other extremists, including Saudis and Pakistanis, on November 6, said the US-led coalition, according to AFP. The force would not identify the captured men who were arrested in an early morning operation by Afghan and coalition troops in Khost. "The detainee, who has known ties to Al Qaeda leadership, was taken into custody along with five other terrorists found in the compound, including Saudi and Pakistani nationals," said the force in a statement. The troops also found grenades, military equipment, armour-piercing rounds and AK-47 assault rifles during a search of the compound where the men were arrested.

August 23: A Pakistan-born architect accused of plotting a "jihad" or holy war bombing campaign in Australia was sentenced to 20 years in jail, according to Daily Times. Faheem Khalid Lodhi was convicted of planning to blow up the electrical grid in Australia's biggest city, Sydney. Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy said the attack, if carried out, would "instill terror into members of the public so that they could never again feel free from the threat of bombing attacks within Australia."

August 11: Pakistan said on August 11, 2006 it had arrested 24 people, including an Al Qaeda operative with links in Afghanistan, in connection with the alleged UK terror plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners. Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said the foiling of the terror plot was the result of close cooperation between Pakistan, the United States and the United Kingdom. She told the media that 24 people have been arrested in connection with the terror conspiracy and those arrested would be handed over to the UK for investigations. “There are indications of Afghanistan based Al Qaeda connection,” she informed, adding “The case has wider international dimensions ... the intelligence cooperation and coordination at the international level to get to the bottom in this case are continuing.”

Further, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said Pakistan had arrested an Al Qaeda operative who had played a key role in the terror plot. “He is a British citizen of Pakistani origin. He is an Al Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan,” Sherpao told Reuters. He said the arrest of the man, identified as Rashid Rauf, had led to a wave of arrests in Britain that headed off the alleged plot to blow up as many as 10 aircraft flying from Britain to the US. “We arrested him from the border area and on his disclosure we shared the information with British authorities, which led to further arrests in Britain,” he told Associated Press.

Newspapers in London cited British Government sources as saying the police launched an operation after a message was sent from Pakistan, following the arrests there apparently urging the plotters to go ahead. “An intercepted message from Pakistan telling the bombers to ‘go now’ had triggered the arrests, reported London’s Guardian. ABC News quoting Pakistani officials identified the ringleader of the bomb plot as Matiur Rehman, said to be a 29-year-old Al Qaeda ‘commander’ accused of involvement in plots to kill President Pervez Musharraf. He was said to be missing along with five others, ABC News said, adding that Rehman was known to be planning a “terror spectacular” to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

August 2: US intelligence agency expert told a US court in the last week of July 2006 that Pakistan is still running a terrorist training camp at Balakot in the North West Frontier Province, according to Dawn. Eric Benn, a terrorism expert for Defence Intelligence Agency, told the district court in California that there was 70 per cent ‘probability’ the satellite images of a place near Balakot were that of a militant training camp. The US intelligence agent showed the jury satellite images taken between 2001 and 2004 but he claimed that the facility in question seemed to have expanded since then. “It may have become less temporary and more permanent,” he testified. The images showed a 3km trail linked to the main road and dotted with several structures that seemed to reflect a guard house, barracks with a tin roof and perhaps some mud houses as well, the reports said. The court is hearing terrorism charges against two Pakistani-Americans, 23-year old Hamid Hayat and his father Umer Hayat. Hamid’s sentencing has been postponed by four months to November and his father Umer Hayat, charged with lying to federal authorities, is being retried after the first round ended in a hung jury.

June 30: Afghan officials claimed on June 29 that they had captured two Pakistanis who were part of a 20-member team that entered southern Afghanistan to carry out suicide attacks. Two other men from the same group were killed a day earlier when they detonated a car bomb near a US-led coalition convoy in southern Zabul province, while 16 other Pakistani nationals were still at large, a police official said.

June 20: A Pakistan-born Australian citizen, Faheem Khalid Lodhi, who was accused of plotting a Jihad bombing campaign in Australia, was convicted on three terrorism-related charges on June 19 and could face life in jail. He had been accused of planning to blow up the electrical grid in Sydney as well as several defence sites in 2003. The indictment said that Lodhi, who denied four counts of preparing to commit a terrorist act, had “the intent of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, namely violent jihad”.

June 7: A federal jury in the United States of America convicted a Maryland man of plotting to assist the Pakistan-based outlawed group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), according to The News. Ali Asad Chandia, aged 29, was found guilty on three counts of terrorism-related charges, including providing material support to the LeT, which is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US Government. Prosecutors linked Chandia, who lives in College Park, Maryland, to a British national, Mohammed Ajmal Khan, who pleaded guilty to terrorism offenses in a British court. The US Department of Justice said in a statement the case, which included evidence from British authorities and testimony from British investigators, showed the importance of cooperation with foreign law enforcement agencies.

June 4: Police have arrested 17 people, including five teenagers, on terrorism-related charges, a senior Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer told a televised news conference in Toronto on June 3-morning, according to Dawn. All the men arrested were residents of Canada and most were Canadian citizens, said Mike McDonell, Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP. The 12 adults and five youths were reportedly of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin. McDonell said it was a "home-grown terror cell intent on launching attacks against targets in Southern Ontario" which would have been more devastating than the Oklahoma City bombing. "This group presented a real and serious threat. They had the capacity and intent to carry out a terrorist attack," he added. Police said they recovered three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a quantity three times the amount used by Timothy McVeigh to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

April 27: A Pakistani-American man was found guilty in a California court on April 25 of undergoing Al Qaeda training just hours after a mistrial was declared in his father’s trial in the same case. Jurors declared Hamid Hayat guilty of providing “material support” to the enemy by training in Pakistan as a terrorist and of lying about it to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, according to the US Attorney’s Office. “Since the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, the number one priority of the Department (of Justice) has been to detect, disrupt and prevent terrorist acts,” said US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. “In this particular case, justice has been served against a man who supported and trained with our terrorist enemies in pursuit of his goal of violent jihad.” Hayat faces up to 39 years in prison and is to be sentenced on July 14, according to Dawn. The verdict came just hours after the judge in the Sacramento, California district court dismissed a separate panel of jurors who couldn’t agree whether Hayat’s father, Umer, lied to the FBI about his son attending an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan. Hamid Hayat, 23, trained with terrorists in Pakistan and planned an attack in the United States, Assistant US Attorney Laura Ferris argued at his trial.

April 26: A police informer told a US Federal District court in Brooklyn on April 24 that a Pakistani immigrant, angered by the war in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, wanted to punish Americans in 2004 by bombing one of New York City’s busiest subway stations, according to Dawn. The Pakistani, Shahawar Matin Siraj, 23, and alleged co-conspirator James Elshafay were arrested on August 27, 2004 on the eve of the Republican National convention. They drew diagrams of the subway station before being arrested, the New York City’s Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said shortly after their arrests that the men never obtained explosives and had not been linked to known terrorist groups. The informant Osama Eldawoody, an Egyptian national, told the court that Siraj vowed to "teach these people a lesson".

April 25: A Pakistani-born architect accused of plotting to bomb Sydney’s power grid and other sites wrote a "terrorism manual" and inquired about chemicals used in home-made bombs, prosecutors told the Supreme Court in Sydney on April 24, according to Dawn. On the first day of his trial, prosecutors told the Supreme Court in Sydney that Faheem Khalid Lodhi plotted to bomb Sydney’s electricity grid and various defence sites in October 2003. The indictment said Lodhi, who denied four counts of preparing to commit a terrorist act, had "the intent of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, namely violent jihad". Prosecutors have previously linked Lodhi, also known as Abu Hamza, to Frenchman Willie Brigitte, who was deported from Australia in late 2003 and has been accused in a leaked French intelligence dossier of planning a terrorist attack "of great size". Both Lodhi and Brigitte are alleged to have trained with the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

April 22: Agents of Atlanta’s Joint Terrorism Task Force have arrested a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student on a charge of material support of terrorism, as part of an investigation that federal authorities describe as ongoing and international in scope, New York Times reported on April 21, 2006. The student, Syed Haris Ahmad, who attends the Georgia Tech University, was born in Pakistan and is a naturalised American citizen. On March 23, 2006 a grand jury in Atlanta indicted Ahmad and charged him with undisclosed violations of two sections of the United States Code: Section 956, which deals with conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country; and Section 2332b, which covers acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries. Ahmed reportedly told the police in March 2006 that he had met with extremists and plotted how to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic by disabling the Global Positioning System.

April 6: On April 5, Canada deported three men with links to a Pakistan-based terrorist group and considered ‘a security risk’ who had earlier been convicted of trying to bomb a Hindu temple, according to Dawn. Barry Adams and Amir Mohammed Ahmed — both from Trinidad and Tobago — and Dominican Republic-born Abdul Baqqer were arrested in 1991 while trying to enter Canada from the United States. All three are believed to be members of Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JuF), "an extremist Pakistan-based religious sect," Canada Border Services Agency spokeswoman Anna Pape said. "This clearly shows that terrorists are not welcome in Canada," she added. Border guards discovered bomb materials during a search of their car in October 1991, she disclosed. The three were convicted in 1994 of conspiracy to commit mischief and endanger lives in relation to the attempted bombing of a Hindu temple and a theatre showing Indian films in Toronto. "They were deported last night with a police escort after serving 12 years in a federal penitentiary," Pape said.

April 3: A Pakistani man was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for his role in a plot to obtain and sell Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, AP reported. Muhamed Abid Afridi reportedly pleaded guilty in federal court in March 2004 to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and one count of conspiracy to distribute heroin and hashish. Two other men pleaded guilty to the same charges. Sentencing for Syed Mustajab Shah, also from Pakistan, is set for June 19, 2006. Ilyas Ali, a naturalised US citizen born in India, is to be sentenced on April 10, 2006. Afridi admitted that he tried to sell five tonnes of hashish and a half-tonne of heroin to undercover US law enforcement officials in exchange for cash and four shoulder-fired Stinger missiles, which he and the other defendants intended to sell to members of the Taliban.

March 18: A British man, who bought equipment, which might have been used in attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan, was jailed for eight years on March 17 after he admitted being a "terrorist quartermaster", UK police said. He was also given a further year in jail for being in contempt of court, according to Reuters. Mohammed Ajmal Khan bought material that was sent to and used by the proscribed Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) group. London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that Khan had access to more than $35,000 to buy equipment, including 1,000 square-metre of Kevlar — a material used to make armour plating for vehicles and for bullet-proof armour. British police said Khan had provided material for the group when it was planning and conducting operations in Afghanistan in 2002-3.

March 16:The US State Department has sought confirmation from Pakistan of the arrest of an Al Qaeda leader believed to be the mastermind of the Madrid bombings in March 2004, according to Daily Times. CNN and NBC News reported in November 2005 that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar was captured after a gun battle in a remote area of Kohat in the North West Frontier Province. CNN also reported that one of Nasar’s aides was killed in the incident. Sources in the Interior Ministry told Daily Times on March 15 that the State Department recently sent a letter to Federal Investigation Agency Director General Tariq Pervez through the US Embassy in Islamabad, seeking information about Nasar’s arrest. The letter, referring to various reports in the American and Spanish media about the arrest, asks the Pakistan Government to confirm whether the Syrian fugitive was being held in Pakistan and inquires about his latest status. Syrian-born Nasar is considered the mastermind of the Madrid bombings, a series of coordinated attacks on March 11, 2004, which killed 192 people and wounded 2,050. The US State Department announced a $5 million reward for Nasar’s capture in July 2005, saying that he was believed to have fled either to Iraq or Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

March 3: According to Daily Times, immigration officials arrested a Belgian national on terrorism charges at Lahore Airport while he was trying to board a plane for Islamabad. Micha Ballen is wanted by Belgium for involvement in several crimes and is believed to be a terrorist. He came to Lahore from London on February 7 by a Gulf Air flight and was staying at a seminary near the city. Ballen is originally from Rwanda but is also a Belgian national, a security official told Daily Times. The Belgian embraced Islam a few years back after establishing links with a religious outfit in Pakistan, he said. "Intelligence agencies intercepted his e-mails which showed that he is connected to militant outfits and wanted to join in their activities."

February 16: Security forces in Afghanistan have arrested "a large number" of Pakistanis and others linked to a recent spate of suicide attacks, according to The News. Many of the detainees have admitted during questioning that they received training at terrorist bases in Pakistan and were given money, explosives and other equipment while there, to launch attacks in Afghanistan, Interior Ministry spokesperson Yousuf Stanezai said on February 15. "The terrorists who come here for suicide attacks are attending training bases in Pakistan and are getting all their equipment there… We’ve arrested a large number who are either Pakistani or came from Pakistan," Stanezai said. He also said some of the leaders of the Taliban are now living in Pakistan and are orchestrating the attacks.

January 20: Three of the foreign terrorists killed in the January 13, 2006-air strikes in the Bajaur Agency have been identified, ABC News said on January 19. One of the dead was said to be 52-year-old Midhat Mursi, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, a top Al Qaeda bomb maker with a five million dollar reward on his head. Another was reported to be Abu Obaidah al-Masri, Al Qaeda’s chief of operations for the eastern Afghan province of Kunar and the third was Abdur Rehman al-Maghribi, the Moroccan son-in-law of Osama Bin Laden’s top lieutenant Ayman Al-Zawahri and the head of Al Qaeda’s media operations. The fourth has not been identified but reports said that he may have been an Egyptian national named Mustafa Usman. A Pakistani intelligence official said that Khalid Habib, head of Al Qaeda’s operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, may have also have been among the dead.

2005

December 31: Police believe a member of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), an outlawed Sunni extremist group, has entered Japan with the aim of setting up a base in that country, a report said on December 30. A male member of the SSP entered Japan in 2003, according to documents from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper said. Police have discovered that this man in his 30s frequented mosques in the Tokyo area and that he told other people that he came to Japan to set up a launch pad for the group, the report said. Japanese police are on heightened alert for possible terrorist activities and fear a move by the militant group to recruit members from Japan’s Muslim community and create a support network, the newspaper added.

December 17: Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States acknowledged on December 15 that "remnants" of the Taliban and Al Qaeda continue to operate in Afghanistan and his country’s border, but insisted they are not resurging significantly. In an interview with Reuters, Jehangir Karamat claimed Osama bin Laden has lost effectiveness, that his Al Qaeda organization has no overarching leadership capable of directing attacks worldwide and that it would be unwise to become "obsessed" with capturing him.

November 16: Pakistan continues to be a sanctuary and training ground for terrorists, a report on the status of recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission on terrorist attacks in the US has said, asking Washington to put pressure on Islamabad to counter terrorism. "Pakistan remains a sanctuary and training ground for terrorists," said a report by Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton of the 9-11 Public Disclosure Project, which examined action taken by US administration on the recommendations of the Commission that probed the September 11, 2001, attacks. "(Pakistan President Pervez) Musharraf has made significant efforts to take on the threat from extremism... yet we are disappointed that he has not done more," said the former Congressman, pointing out that Gen. Musharraf has not lived up to his promises to regulate the Madrassas properly.

October 19: A Pakistani and three Americans have been charged with plotting terrorist attacks on military facilities and synagogues in the United States, according to Dawn. Pakistani national, Hammad Riaz Samana, and three American-born Muslim converts, Levar Haley Washington, Gregory Vernon Patterson and Kevin James, have been accused of conspiring to wage war against the US Government through terrorism, kill armed service members and murder foreign officials. Their trial will start on October 24 in a California court. Prosecutors contend the plot was orchestrated by Washington, Patterson and Samana at the behest of James -— an inmate at the California State Prison, Sacramento — who allegedly founded the radical group Jamiyyat ul-Islam-us-Saheeh.

September 26: An official of the ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Hamidullah, is reported to have been arrested from Bannu district in the North West Frontier Province on September 24. Hamidullah was in charge of the Taliban’s Department for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Khost, according to Dawn. An unnamed security official said that the arrest occurred when troops raided a house in the remote Basya Khel town of Bannu district. Hamidullah was wanted for allegedly mobilising tribesmen for terrorist activity, he said.

September 24: US prosecutors on September 22 reportedly charged a California Muslim of Pakistani origin with providing material support for terrorists by attending an Al Qaeda-linked training camp. According to Dawn, Hamid Hayat was charged in an indictment with offering himself as personnel for Jehadi training in Pakistan and then returning to the United States to wage Jehad, federal prosecutors said. The suspect attended a camp with "ties to Al Qaeda" between March 2003 and June 2005 where he received training in "physical fitness, firearms, and means to wage jihad," prosecutors from the California capital of Sacramento said. Hamid allegedly admitted in a June 4 interview that he had attended a camp in Pakistan for three to six months "to teach people to kill those who work against Muslims" and receive training in weapons, explosives and hand to hand combat.

September 16: US authorities said that they arrested a man on charges of providing support to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a designated terrorist organisation in the United States, according to The News. Ali Asad Chandia was arrested a day earlier at College Park in the Maryland suburbs, said Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher in a statement. Chandia and a British national, Mohammed Ajmal Khan, face a four-count indictment on charges of providing support to the LeT. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Khan, who has been detained in Britain, is believed to be a top recruiter for the LeT and Fisher’s statement said Chandia and Khan met during late 2001 in Pakistan.

September 13: According to British newspaper The Telegraph, one of the four London suicide bombers made several calls to a stolen mobile phone in Pakistan up to three days before the July 7, 2005 attacks. Pakistani officials claimed that they have traced the stolen phone after receiving requests from Britain’s MI5 to investigate and they suspect that it was used by terrorists linked to the bombers, and then discarded after the London attacks. The phone number was rung several times - as late as July 4 - by Shehzad Tanweer, one of the bombers who visited Pakistan more than six months ago along with Mohammad Sidique Khan, the cell’s suspected ringleader.

August 24: In an interview to the Japanese news agency Kyodo, President Pervez Musharraf confirmed that Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan provided centrifuge machines and their designs to North Korea, but said these transfers did not help North Korea acquire a nuclear weapons capability. Gen Musharraf said Khan could not have been of immense help to North Korea nuclear weapons programme because his laboratory had engaged in uranium enrichment, and not involved in the other steps needed to make a nuclear bomb such as conversion of uranium into gas and development of the trigger mechanism and delivery systems, according to Dawn.

August 22: The United Nations Security Council Special Committee on Prevention of Terrorism has confirmed that Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami and two other parties links with the Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are being investigated. The spokesperson of the Security Council Committee 1267 also said that if allegations against the parties were proved after the investigation, the Pakistan Government would be requested to ban these parties, according to The News.

August 17: A Pakistani has been arrested as part of a probe into a possible terrorist plot targeting Southern California locations, the Los Angles Times reported on August 16. Twenty-one year old Hamad Riaz Samana of Los Angeles was detained last week as part of an investigation that began with the arrest of two men in Torrance suspected of robbing gas stations, the newspaper reported.

August 9: A judge in San Francisco is reported to have refused bail for a Pakistani Imam (priest), Shabbir Ahmed, detained in a terrorism-related probe. Shabbir Ahmed is "both a flight risk and a danger to the community," Judge Anthony Murry said after a four-hour hearing, according to media reports. Ahmed, a citizen of Pakistan, is accused of violating the terms of his religious-worker visa and is fighting deportation to Pakistan, according to San Francisco Chronicle. FBI lead case agent Gary Schaaf said in testimony that Shabbir Ahmed and others wanted to form a Lodi religious school where individuals will be taught a very conservative brand of Islam, and students will be spotted and assessed to commit violence. The 39-year old Ahmed was arrested in June 2005 on immigration charges along with Mohammad Adil Khan, who was leading the effort to build a Muslim school in Lodi, as well as Khan's son. Adil Khan and his son agreed in July 2005 to be deported to Pakistan rather than fight the charges.

August 7: The Pakistani Government is deceiving the US and the West by helping militants freely enter Afghanistan from Waziristan, said Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Secretary General, Maulana Fazlur Rehman. He told a press conference in Lahore that the Government should give the identity of the infiltrators and its (government's) motives for helping them enter Afghanistan. "They must also give the nation the identities of the men being moved from Waziristan to militant camps in Mansehra. This is hypocrisy. The rulers are not only trying to deceive the US and the West, but also hoodwinking the entire nation," he claimed.

August 6: A Maryland resident, Mahmud Faruq Brent alias Mahmud Al Mutazzim, was arrested on August 5, 2005 in Newark, New Jersey, and charged with conspiring to aid terrorism by training to become a Jihadi fighter in camps in Pakistan, said a report in New York Times. Brent was accused of traveling to Pakistan after 9/11 to receive training in camps operated by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the report said. Brent was an associate of Tarik Shah, a New York jazz musician who was arrested on May 28 on terrorism charges, according to the newspaper. Brent, in telephone calls and at least one meeting, had described his stay in the camps to Shah. He had also told Shah that he had been in the mountains in Pakistan training with "the Mujahideen, the fighters."

August 4: An unnamed official in Islamabad was quoted as saying in The News that authorities were trying to determine whether Ethiopian-born Muktar Said Ibrahim, alleged ringleader in the failed attacks in London on July 21, 2005, had visited Pakistan. Investigators reportedly believe that any confirmation of a visit by Ibrahim to Pakistan would strengthen the theory of a link between the two groups of bombers.

August 1: According to The Sunday Times, "One of them [London bombers], Shehzad Tanweer, from the Leeds suburb of Beeston, is said by relatives in Pakistan to have spent time there with militants from the banned extremist Jaish Mohammad organisation… Efforts were under way to arrest Jaish Mohammed leader Masood Azhar, whom Tanweer is believed to have contacted."

July 28: A Pakistani national suspected of involvement in terrorist activities has been arrested from the eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan, said Governor Asadullah Wafa. According to the Governor, the arrested man was identified as Sher Ali, hailing from Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

July 26: The Peshawar Corps Commander Lt Gen Syed Safdar Hussain admits that some pro-Taliban elements from Pakistan were crossing into Afghanistan and that some Pakistani religious groups were offering support and cooperation to them. Speaking to a private television channel, Hussain disclosed "They [Taliban] are getting public support in Pakistan, especially from some Pakistani religious parties."

July 19: According to Daily Times, Kenya has arrested five men on suspicion of terrorism links after they were seen taking photos from a ferry. Police sources said the men, believed to have come from Pakistan, had no legal travel documents in their possession.

July 18: According to Statesman, a key aide of the Taliban chief Mullah Muhammad Omar and four other Taliban cadres were arrested from Akora Khattak in the North West Frontier Province. Sources said that a deputy of Mullah Omar, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, two other leaders of the Taliban militia, identified as Maulvi Abdul Haq and Maulvi Abdul Qadir, and two associates were arrested from a refugee camp. Kabir had served as Governor of Nangarhar and Kunar during the Taliban era. He is also reportedly on the list of the most-wanted persons of United States.

July 17: Daily Times, quoting security officials in Islamabad, reports that three of the four London suicide bombers had recently visited Pakistan and investigators are probing whether they met with Al Qaeda-linked militant groups. Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer arrived together at Karachi Airport in November 2004 and returned to Britain in early February. Hasib Hussain came separately at an undisclosed time last year, also to Karachi, and went back to Britain shortly afterwards.

July 15: The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw expresses concern over what goes on in some Madrassas in Pakistan, after it emerged that one of the London bombers had attended a seminary. According to The News, Shahzad Tanweer, who bombed an underground subway train at Aldgate in London, had gone to a Madrassa in December 2004 to become a Hafiz (someone who has memorized the Holy Koran). "We are concerned about what goes on in some of the Madrassas in Pakistan," Straw told reporters in London.

July 14: News reports identify three Britons of Pakistani descent, the alleged suicide bombers, as Shahzad Tanweer, a 22-year-old cricket-loving sports science graduate; Hasib Hussain, aged 19; and Mohammed Sidique Khan, the 30-year-old father of an 8-month-old baby.

July 12: The Police said that at least three of the bombers who carried out the July 7 terrorist attacks in London are believed to be British males of Pakistani origin who lived in West Yorkshire in Leeds. Police said they believe four men, including the three Pakistani origin persons, who arrived at King's Cross on July 7-morning on a train from Leeds were behind the terrorist attacks that killed at least 52 people and injured 700 on three tube trains and one bus. CCTV footage at King's Cross station showed the four suspected bombers together at 8.30am, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan police's anti-terrorism branch, told a press conference.

July 11: According to Daily Times, Afghan authorities said that they had arrested five men, including a Pakistani national, and foiled a series of planned bombings across the country. Police arrested the Pakistani national from Kunduz, where he planned to attack German troops from a Provincial Reconstruction Team, said Interior Ministry spokesperson Lutfullah Mashal. On the same day, police from Kabul’s Quick Reaction Force arrested a man armed with weapons, explosives, a radio and propaganda tapes. He is reported to have studied at two Pakistani religious schools and planned to bomb electoral centres and offices as part of a five-man team, the other members of which escaped, said Gen. Mahboob Amiri.

June 30: Five Pakistanis suspected of planning terrorist attacks in the south of Afghanistan have been arrested, said Afghan police. They had crossed from Pakistan into the Afghan province of Zabul and were arrested on June 29 while traveling by bus to the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, provincial police chief Allahyar told AFP. They were arrested on a tip-off from the US-led coalition forces who had kept them under surveillance, added Ghulam Mohammed Aka, chief of police in Shahr-e-Safa district, where the arrests were made.

June 24: The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is reported to have said in Moscow that terrorists from Afghanistan and Pakistan were training for attacks against Russia and the former Soviet Central Asia and that they periodically cross into Central Asian territory. "On the territory of Afghanistan and on the territory adjacent to the Afghan border with Pakistan, training is going on of terrorists, with the participation of Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan... for conducting terrorist attacks, including on the territory of the Russian Federation," disclosed Lavrov.

June 23: The Interior Minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, says that the Al Qaeda had established a strong nexus with outlawed extremist groups in Pakistan. "There is a nexus of Al Qaeda and extremist elements in Pakistan. Whenever they feel hurt, they react. But it will not decrease our resolve against terrorism," he told Daily Times in an interview. Without naming any organisation, the minister said outlawed groups were facilitating Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.

June 20: According to Daily Times, Afghan intelligence officials have foiled a plot to assassinate the former US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and arrested three Pakistanis armed with rocket propelled grenades and assault rifles. An Afghan presidential spokesperson said that the men were arrested from Laghman province a day earlier. Afghan television is reported to have subsequently broadcast a video of the suspects identifying them as Murat Khan, Noor Alam, and Zahid. While two of them claimed they came from Peshawar, the other said he was from Mansehra.

The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, on June 20 accused Pakistan of interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. Radio Tehran quoted Karzai as telling a religious council that Islamabad was backing the anti-Kabul elements. The President alleged that Pakistan had threatened the Taliban with handing over their families to the US if they did not fight against Afghanistan.

June 18: The United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, suggests that the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has been hiding in Pakistan and criticised Islamabad’s failure to act against Taliban leaders. In an interview with Afghanistan’s Aina Television, Khalilzad said that a Pakistani TV channel had interviewed a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, at a time when Pakistani officials claimed they did not know the whereabouts of Taliban leaders. "If a TV station can get in touch with them, how can the intelligence service of a country, which has nuclear bombs and a lot of security and military forces, not find them," Khalilzad said. "Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders should have been in Pakistan," he added.

June 16: A Pakistani and two Frenchmen were given three-to-five-year prison sentences by a Paris court which found them guilty of aiding convicted "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, who attempted to blow up a Paris-Miami flight on December 22, 2001 in the United States, according to AFP. The three were convicted of associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise, three years after being arrested for their ties to Reid. Ghulam, a 64-year-old Pakistani and president of a charity association called Chemin Droit (Right Path), received a five-year sentence for helping orient Reid on French soil and recruiting Jehadis. The two Frenchmen, Hassan el Cheguer and Hakim Mokhfi, were groomed by Ghulam to fight abroad, the court found.

June 10: An investigation into an Al Qaeda cell in the US city of Lodi, California, in which a man and his son and two Muslim religious leaders were held earlier, led to the arrest on June 8 of another Pakistani, Mohammad Hassan Adil. A US immigration and customs enforcement official said Adil, was detained for violation of immigration rules. He is son of Mohammed Adil Khan, who was recently taken into custody along with Lodi mosque Imam Shabbir Ahmed under same charges.

June 9: According to Daily Times, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested a father and son of Pakistani origin in the Californian town of Lodi for their alleged links to the Al Qaeda. Both were American citizens and along with them two other Pakistanis, one an Imam (priest) of the local mosque and the other his likely successor, were arrested on immigration charges. Umer Hayat, an ice cream truck driver had migrated from Pakistan, but his son Hamid Hayat was born in the United States and a FBI official said "the Hayats have been on the radar for a while and this case has more to it than just these two guys."

May 23: Security forces in Peshawar arrest two Arabs for their alleged links with the Al Qaeda from the Charsadda area. According to Nation, the troops launched an operation against some four Arab families at Dosehra in the Charsadda area and subsequent to an exchange of fire between the two sides for about three hours, while two suspects managed to escape, two others were arrested.

May 20: During his visit to South Waziristan, the Corps Commander Peshawar, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, claims that at least 100 foreign terrorists, still hiding in the area, were no longer able to plan and execute terrorist attacks. "We are hunting them. They cannot operate now," said Hussain.

May 16: Afghan guerrillas are still launching attacks from the safety of Pakistan despite the Pakistani military’s battle against Islamist terrorists, said a US army officer. "My base, where I live, is in Khost province, and I will say, absolutely, there are insurgents coming across the border from Pakistan attacking into Khost, then returning back into Pakistan," Colonel Gary Cheek told a news conference. Cheek is commander of approximately 4,000 US-led troops in 16 eastern Afghan provinces, including Khost, according to Reuters.

May 13: According to Dawn, the Kenyan police on May 13 arrested 63 Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals in the port city of Mombassa and said they were investigating them for possible links to terrorism. "We are investigating their presence here and terrorism could be a possibility," an unnamed police official said. But the suspects could also be linked to money laundering, drugs trafficking or being in the country illegally, he added.

May 11: A suspected Al Qaeda operative, identified as Salah Muhammad, is arrested from Ghallanai at Mohmand Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A raid was conducted based on information provided by the intelligence reports that some people belonging to the Al Qaeda were hiding at the village Pir Makay.

A Pakistani and two Frenchmen of North African origin reportedly went on trial at a criminal court in Paris on May 11 on terror charges for their suspected roles in a recruiting network providing Jehad fighters. The trial will last until May 27. They were arrested in 2002 for allegedly giving logistical support to the would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid, a British national and self-proclaimed disciple of Osama bin Laden. French suspects Hassan el-Cheguer and Hakim Mokhfi, both aged 31, told investigators they had been recruited for Jehad by a 67-year-old Pakistani Ghulam Rama, who heads the ‘Chemin Droit’ (Straight Path) humanitarian group in France, according to The News.

May 4: A leader from the defunct Sunni group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Tariq Javed, is arrested in New York, according to New York Post. Javed was seen snapping photos last year of the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges in New York city and was arrested for allegedly lying on his immigration papers about his terror links, the paper quoted officials as saying. He had declared jihad against Americans, according to the complaint issued by Manhattan US Attorney David Kelly.

Security forces have arrested top Al Qaeda terrorist, Abu Faraj Al Libbi, who was allegedly behind two assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf in 2003, Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said in Islamabad on May 4. Addressing a press conference, the Minister said the Libyan national had been arrested a few days back. However, he declined to give details about how and from where Abu Faraj had been arrested.

May 1: According to Daily Times, security agencies raided a seminary in Karachi and arrested a Taliban activist wanted by the Afghan Government in the killing of a prominent pro-US Afghan leader. An unnamed official said Sirajul Haq and another unidentified man were arrested during a raid in the Malir area. Haq is wanted in the murder of Abdul Haq, who was killed by the Taliban in 2001.

April 28: According to Dawn, a local Muslim scholar has been convicted of encouraging his followers to join the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and to do Jehad against the United States. Ali Tamimi of Fairfax County faces a mandatory life imprisonment for preaching Jehad soon after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Tamimi was reportedly convicted of inspiring a group of his Northern Virginia followers to attend terrorist training camps abroad and to prepare to battle American troops. The prosecution claimed that many of his followers practiced for Jehad by playing paintball in the Virginia countryside while some others trained with the LeT.

According to Daily Times, Pakistan on April 28 deported two Tanzanian nationals arrested more than two years ago on suspicion of having links with the Al Qaeda. Moso Muhammad and Taha Yalfan were sent to Dubai from Peshawar for their onward journey to the Tanzanian capital Dar Es Salaam, an unnamed security official told AFP. The two were reportedly arrested during November 2002 from the tribal areas while sneaking in from Afghanistan.

April 23: Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive and is hiding somewhere in the inaccessible Pakistan-Afghan tribal belt, said President Pervez Musharraf. "Osama is alive and I am cent per cent sure that he is hiding in the Pakistani-Afghan tribal belt," Gen. Musharraf said in an interview to the CNN. The President said the tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border stretched to difficult mountain ranges where it would be very hard to locate Osama bin Laden due to the lack of communication infrastructure.

April 14: Spanish authorities have reportedly charged 11 Pakistani nationals over suspected links with Al Qaeda operatives who carried out the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 which killed nearly 200 people. One of the eleven, Shahzad Ali Gujar, is suspected of having transferred funds to Al Qaeda cadres, including Amjad Farooki, whom Pakistani security forces killed during September 2004 and who was implicated in the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. According to Dawn, investigators believe Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan received some 800,000 euros ($1 million) in funds from Spain. Mohamed Afzaal, believed to have headed the Pakistani cell in question, is suspected of sending money in September 2004 to Rabei Ousman Sayed Ahmed alias "Mohammed the Egyptian", who is currently in custody on suspicion of involvement in the train bombings.

April 12: Security forces in Peshawar are reported to have arrested four Iraqi nationals for their suspected links to the Al Qaeda. They were detained on April 10 during two separate raids on the outskirts of Peshawar. An unnamed official said one of the detainees, identified as Abdul Aziz, is a fluent speaker of the local Pashtu language and was caught with computer discs and other documents.

April 9: According to Asia Pulse, Australia has re-listed six groups as terrorist organisations, warning that anyone associated with them faces up to 25 years in jail. Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, named the six organisations as Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ), Jaish-e-Mohammad, both Pakistan-based and Asbat al-Ansar, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and the Islamic Army of Aden. The six groups were originally listed as terrorist organisations in April 2003, but Australian laws provide that the listing of a terrorist organisation expires after two years. "The government has decided to re-list these groups as I continue to be satisfied on reasonable grounds that they are directly or indirectly engaged in, preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act," said Ruddock.

April 8: Pakistan will deport 17 Afghans, including a former Kabul police chief, who were arrested in January 2005 for their alleged links with the Taliban, said Balochistan police chief, Choudhury Mohammed Yaqub, on April 7. Twenty-three Afghans were arrested from the provincial capital, Quetta, on January 27, but six were later released, according to Daily Times. The 17 reportedly include an alleged former Taliban deputy governor and Kabul’s former police chief.

April 1: Six foreigners, suspected to be Afghans and Central Asians, were reportedly arrested from Abdara in Peshawar on March 30 for their alleged links to the Al Qaeda. "Two hand-grenades, a pistol, computer disks and literature glorifying militancy were seized during the raid," an unnamed official told Daily Times. "These people have been under surveillance for some time and we have credible information that they are linked to Al Qaeda… They had been living in a rented house in Peshawar’s University Town neighbourhood for a few weeks," said the official.

March 27: A suspected Al Qaeda operative was reportedly killed on March 25 in the Hangu district of North West Frontier Province. "We suspect Farooq may be an Al Qaeda man but we have not reached any conclusion as yet," District Police Officer, Zebullah Khan, told Daily Times. Sources said that Farooq was staying with local resident Rafiq in the Zarguri area, 25 kilometers from Hangu city, as a guest when another guest killed him on March 25-night.

March 21: The AFP has reported that a suspected Pakistani suicide bomber, who planned to target foreign troops and senior Afghan officials, has been arrested in the southeastern Khost province of Afghanistan. "We arrested a Pakistani national Shahbaz on Friday [March 18] near Khost city after a tip off that some foreign suicide bombers have entered the province," Khost border forces commander, Almar Gull Mangal, told AFP. "Shahbaz has confessed coming to Afghanistan with a five-member group four days prior to his arrest and was looking for coalition and high-ranking Afghan targets to carry out suicide attacks," Mangal said.

March 19: Terrorists in Pakistan remain committed to attacking US targets and it is a matter of time before the Al Qaeda or another group uses chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, said the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director, Porter J. Goss, on March 18, reported Daily Times. He said this while talking to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in his first public appearance as the Director.

March 15: An Anti-terrorism court in Karachi convicted, on March 14, Dr. Akmal Waheed and his younger brother Dr. Arshad Waheed and sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment totaling 18 years on charges of causing disappearance of evidence by harbouring and providing medical treatment to Al Qaeda terrorists. According to Dawn, the brothers, one a cardiac specialist of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and the other a kidney physician of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, were prosecuted on charges of sheltering and training Al Qaeda terrorists, providing them funds and medical treatment, under Sections 212, 216, 201 and 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code and Sections 21-J, 21-C, 11-N of the Anti-terrorism Act, 1997.

Osama Bin Laden attempted to communicate with Al Qaeda’s front-man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a month ago through a letter that was seized when a ground courier in Pakistan was intercepted, a counter-terrorism expert reportedly said in Dubai on March 14. "About four weeks ago, we intercepted communication between Osama Bin Laden and Zarqawi," which occurred when "a ground courier was intercepted," Bob Newman, Director of international security and counter-terrorism services with The GeoScope Group, told an Airport, Port and Terminal Security Middle East conference. Newman, whose Colorado-based organization provides teams to help track down terrorist suspects at the planning stage, later told reporters the courier was stopped in west Pakistan, "carrying a letter."

March 8: According to The News, the four foreign terrorists arrested during a military operation at Dewgar village in North Waziristan on March 5 include one each from Qatar, Albania, Somalia and Tajikistan. Official sources said that the four men, along with seven Pakistanis, were being interrogated at a military station. One of the two foreigners killed in the operation reportedly belonged to Sudan. The troops had also seized three rocket-launchers, 28 grenades, two RPG-7 rockets, eight sub-machineguns, one light machinegun and five anti-tank mines from the incident site.

Three senior Taliban officials, arrested in Pakistan, have reportedly been handed over to the US military at the Bagram base in Afghanistan. The Pajhwok Afghan News agency quoted an Afghan intelligence source as saying that the officials in the US custody were Maulvi Mohammad Taha, former Nangarhar Province chief of police, Mulla Abdul Razzaq, Taliban’s top military commander and Syed Akbar Agha, leader of a Taliban splinter faction, Jaish-e-Muslimeen. The Kabul-based news agency said Agha was suspected of being involved in the abduction of three United Nations elections workers in Kabul during October 2004.

February 13: Dawn reports that a Pakistani citizen, Salahuddin Amin, arrested in London after his arrival from Pakistan, was charged under the British anti-terrorism law on February 12 for planning an explosives’ attack. Amin, who was detained on February 8 at London's Heathrow airport under the Terrorism Act of 2000, was alleged to have conspired with others, between Oct 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004, to explode a bomb, which was likely to endanger life and cause serious property damage.

February 12: Farhat Paracha, wife of Pakistani businessman Saifullah Paracha who has been held captive at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for the past 19 months by the US authorities for his suspected terrorist ties with Al Qaeda, disclosed on February 11 that her husband had met Osama bin Laden twice. Speaking at a news conference at the Karachi Press Club, she, however, denied that Saifullah had any links with terrorism. She claimed that as the head of a 65-member business delegation, Saifullah went to Afghanistan and had business meetings with a small number of people there, but he had nothing to do with the charges framed against him by the US administration.

February 7: According to Time magazine, a recent investigation has revealed that Pakistan’s A Q Khan network played a larger role in helping Iran and North Korea acquire material for a nuclear bomb. According to US intelligence officials, the magazine said, Khan sold North Korea much of the necessary material to build a nuclear bomb, including high-speed centrifuges used to enrich uranium and the equipment required to manufacture more of them. They, along with officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also believe that Iran may have bought the same set of goods — centrifuges and possibly weapons designs — from Khan in the mid-1990s. The IAEA investigators have revealed that Iran privately confirmed at least 13 meetings (from 1994 to 1999) with representatives of the Khan network. "Nothing has changed… The hardware is still available, and the network hasn’t stopped," Time quoted one of Khan’s former aides as saying.

February 2: Security agencies in Peshawar are reported to have arrested a Tunisian national for his alleged links to the Al Qaeda. The suspect, identified as Abdul Qayum, was arrested while shopping at a market in Peshawar, an unnamed intelligence official told AFP.

January 27: Twenty-three Afghans were reportedly arrested in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, on suspicion of their links with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The suspects, who included a former deputy governor and ex-police chief of Kabul, were arrested from three places in Quetta, said Balochistan Police chief, Mohammed Yaqub. He said the detainees had held "important positions during Taliban’s tenure" in Afghanistan, and "we suspect that some of them have close links with Al Qaeda." Yaqub disclosed that the suspects were detained during raids in Kharotabad, Pashtun Abad and Nawan Kili.

January 25: A top Al Qaeda operative from Tanzania was handed over to US authorities shortly after his arrest in Pakistan last July, stated a senior intelligence official. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who was wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in east Africa that killed more than 200 people, was arrested after a shootout in Gujarat on July 27, 2004. "A week after the arrest, he was handed over to the Americans," a senior intelligence official said. However, no senior government official has confirmed if Pakistan had handed over Ghailani to the US authorities last year.

January 18: The News reports that bodies of two foreign militants, who appeared to be Uzbeks, were delivered to officials in Makeen in South Waziristan by a pro-government tribal elder who claimed he killed them on January 17-night outside his home. Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, senior vice-president of the pro-government Amn (Peace) Committee, Makeen, met Colonel Fayyaz Iqbal Khattak and informed him that he had shot the two militants down before they could throw hand-grenades into his house. He claimed to have recovered two AK-47 rifles, four magazines, four hand-grenades, and a wireless from the slain militants.

January 7: According to Daily Times, three suspected Al Qaeda terrorists, including a Yemeni national Shaikh Yousuf, were arrested from the Super Highway area of Karachi city. A lap top computer, a satellite phone and a Russian-made weapon were recovered from their possession.

January 2: Pakistan extradites two Turks suspected of links to the Al Qaeda network who were immediately arrested and charged by the Turkish authorities in Ankara. The Anatolia news agency reported that Mehmet Yilmaz and Mahmut Kaplan, who were arrested in Lahore in August 2004, were brought before a court in Gaziantep, where they are wanted for "membership of a clandestine Islamist organisation." According to Dawn, Pakistani authorities suspect Yilmaz of having fought alongside the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

2004

December 27, 2004: AFP has reported that security forces arrested an Uzbek national with suspected Al Qaeda links close to the Afghan border although his five Chechen associates managed to escape.

December 20: The Lahore Police is reported to have arrested at least six associates of the Libyan Al Qaeda operative, Abu Al-Faraj, who carries a Rupees 250 million bounty on his head for his suspected involvement in the two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.

December 18: According to Dawn, military sources have indicated that during the first week of October 2004, Rupees 60 million was distributed through the Al Qaeda network to its three key operatives in the Waziristan area. One of the recipients was fugitive tribal militant leader, Abdullah Mehsud, said sources. The cash, mostly in dollars, comes generally from countries in the Middle East and Central Asia and large amounts are distributed among local people to provide refuge to foreign militants. It was found that in one particular case, a Madrassa (seminary) was paid Rs100, 000 for providing shelter to militants for one month.

November 29: Police arrests an alleged Chechen terrorist who had attacked police and other people with a hand-grenade after failing to rob a money-changer in the Qandahri bazaar. "The Chechen national came from Wana along with other companions," Balochistan IGP Chaudhary Yaqoob told Dawn. Abdul Ghafar along with other Chechens had escaped from South Waziristan and taken shelter in Quetta, after the military action in the tribal area

November 23: Two foreign terrorists, hailing from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are arrested after being overpowered by members of a tribal peace committee in the Makeen area of South Waziristan.

November 10: Spanish police indicate that they had arrested two Pakistanis overnight in Barcelona for alleged membership of an Islamist terrorist group, which they said they had broken up in a September raid in the northeastern city. Spanish judge Ismael Moreno had ordered the operation, which nabbed 10 other Pakistani suspects on September 15. Police did not name either of the latest two suspects, nor their alleged role in the group.

November 9: The influx of foreign militants into Wana is continuing from neighbouring countries, making it difficult for Pakistani security forces to combat terrorism, says Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao.

November 2: Dawn reports that security agencies have arrested two Al Qaeda suspects, including a foreign national, from the Satellite Town area in Quetta. The "suspects include an Iraqi national," sources said, identifying him as Khaled. The nationality of the other suspect could not be ascertained. They were in Quetta in connection with an arms deal, the report added.

November 1: Daily Times, quoting the Spanish newspaper El Pais, reports that the ten Pakistanis arrested in Barcelona in mid-September this year were believed to have funded Al Qaeda operatives by transferring money to Pakistan from Spain. The paper, citing sources close to the investigation, reported that the men had wired money earlier this year to three collaborators of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was suspected of planning the September 11 attacks. The report did not name the collaborators but said that they had been arrested in a raid earlier this year in Pakistan, which had left one of them dead.

October 20: Two foreign Al Qaeda activists, a Yemeni and an Egyptian from Lahore and Peshawar respectively, are arrested. The Yemeni, identified as Saleh Nauman, was arrested in Lahore about 10 days ago while trying to slip out of Pakistan, Daily Times reported quoting an intelligence official.

October 6: Three persons, including an Arab national, are arrested for their alleged links to the Al Qaeda near Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province.

October 3: Two Afghan nationals, identified as Abdur Rashid and Muhammad Rahim, are arrested for their alleged links with the Al Qaeda network from a mosque in the suburbs of Mingora in Peshawar.

October 1: Armed men from the Mehsud tribe, allied to the Government, kill a foreign terrorist and capture another after a brief encounter in the Sarwakai area, according to Dawn. While the deceased was stated to be an unidentified Turkmen, the detained terrorist belongs to Tajikistan and was identified as Muhammad Khalid.

September 30: A Libyan national, identified as Ahmad Abdullah, is arrested from the suburbs of Peshawar for his alleged links with the Al Qaeda. According to The Nation, he has been living in the Matani area since long.

September 28: The News, quoting unnamed western diplomatic sources, said that some valuable ‘Arab targets’ do exist in the Pakistani tribal areas, including Abu Faraj al Libbi, who is believed to be head of the Al Qaeda operations in the country. These sources believe that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had gathered valuable evidence through satellite images and radio equipment that suggested presence of some of the most-wanted men there.

September 27: Al Qaeda is helping Taliban terrorists to disrupt the presidential elections in Afghanistan, says the US Commander of the coalition forces in the country, Lt. Gen. David Barno. Gen. Barno said in the Afghan capital Kabul that most of the network’s operatives were in Pakistan and it was more likely that key figures such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahri were there instead of Afghanistan. Barno also said it would take time to assess whether this year’s Pakistani intelligence breakthroughs against Al Qaeda would lead to bin Laden, Zawahri or Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar.

September 22: Nazarkhel Mahsud tribesmen, on voluntary guard duty at night, fire at three men allegedly trying to plant missiles in the Manzarkhel Zhay area, according to The News. One of the men, suspected to be from Uzbekistan, reportedly died and the other two, believed to be local tribesmen, were arrested.

September 20: The senior leadership of Al Qaeda could be hiding in the tribal area near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, says a US military spokesperson. "The borders remain very porous between both countries, is it possible that senior leadership of Al Qaeda is hiding... in Pakistan or Afghanistan," said Major Scott Nelson during a news briefing in Kabul

September 19: An Algerian national identified as Ibrahim alias Ali, was reportedly arrested along with a Pakistani from the Spina Warai village near Peshawar.

September 15: The Spanish police arrest 10 Pakistanis suspected of involvement in Islamic extremism during an operation in the northeastern region of Catalonia, reported AFP. Judicial sources in Madrid said the suspects were arrested ‘for Islamic terrorism’ and said all were of Pakistani origin. A police spokesperson said the Pakistani suspects "could have financed radical organisations outside Spain’s borders." Five of the Pakistanis were detained in the northern Barcelona district of Trinitat Vella and five more in the central ‘Barrio chino’ or Chinese district, where there is a concentration of Pakistanis. Foreign Office spokesperson Masood Khan said in Islamabad that those arrested by the Spanish police also included some Pakistani citizens.

September 13: Cambodian police arrested four men believed to be of Pakistani origin over the weekend in connection with terrorist activities, a Government spokesman confirmed on September 13. Government spokesperson Khieu Kanharith told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) that Cambodian police had arrested four men, but refused to confirm Radio Free Asia reports that they were of Pakistani origin.

September 9: At least 50 terrorists, including some Chechens, Uzbeks and Arabs, are reported to have been killed and 120 others were wounded during an aerial raid on their training camp at Bad Awaz Garang in the Kaikhel area of South Waziristan.

September 7: An Al Qaeda-linked Saudi terrorist, identified as Abdullah, is arrested from a house at Shakas village in the Jamrud district, about 25 kilometers west of Peshawar. According to Dawn, he had lived in the area for many years and that he had been arrested once before, in the late 1990s.

September 1: The security agencies are reported to have arrested two foreigners, including a man believed to be a senior Al Qaeda operative, during a raid in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, said official sources. The suspects, an Egyptian identified as Sharif Al Misri and Saudi national Abdul Hakeem, were arrested on August 29 from the Ghausabad area of Quetta.

August 30: Two Arabs were reportedly arrested from the Hayatabad area in Peshawar on suspicion of being Al Qaeda operatives.

August 28: Daily Times reported that a Pakistani national and a US citizen were arrested over an alleged plot to blow up a subway station in New York. City police commissioner Raymond Kelly said that "it is clear they had the intention to cause damage and kill people". But he said there was no immediate evidence that they were connected to Al Qaeda or any international terrorist groups.

August 26: Sajjad Nasser, a Pakistani national accused of attending a terrorist training camp, is deported from the United States to Pakistan. Nasser was deported under a section of the Patriot Act that expands the legal definitions of terrorist organizations and acts, said Corina Almeida, chief counsel for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nasser was arrested in March 2003 on charges of conspiring to harbour an illegal resident. Immigration authorities accused him of attending a training camp run by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.

August 24: Four Uzbek nationals were arrested for alleged terrorist links during a raid in South Waziristan, said Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat.

August 23: Security forces are reported to have killed four Uzbek terrorists during an encounter in the Miranshah area of North Waziristan.

Separately, seven Afghan nationals were arrested for their alleged links to the Al Qaeda in Malakwal on the same day.

August 22: President Pervez Musharraf discloses that a Libyan Al Qaeda suspect masterminded the two assassination attempts on him during December 2003. He is "the mastermind behind the two plots," Gen. Musharraf said this in an interview to the Time magazine, to be published on Aug 30.

August 20: An Uzbek terrorist and a member of the Zalikhel sub-tribe were reportedly killed during the ongoing clashes between terrorists and troops in the Santoi and Mantoi mountains of South Waziristan.

August 19: Two foreign nationals allegedly linked to the Al Qaeda were arrested after a brief encounter with the security force personnel in the Hayatabad township of Peshawar. While one of the suspects was identified as Mohammad Fauzi, an Algerian national, the other is reportedly an Iraqi national.

August 17: Security agencies in Lahore have reportedly arrested two more Al Qaeda suspects for their alleged involvement in a suicide attack on Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz. Muhammad Shafiq is suspected to be Taliban chief Mulla Mohammed Omar’s close aide while Abu Hamza is an Al Qaeda operative from Myanmar.

August 11: Four Turkish nationals are reported to have been arrested from Lahore over the weekend for suspected links to the Al Qaeda. While their identities were not officially disclosed, The Nation reported that two of them were ‘diehard’ operatives of Al Qaeda and fought with the Taliban against US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

A Pakistani man, arrested from Long Island in New York, has reportedly admitted to smuggling money, night vision goggles and other military gear to a senior Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a report in the New York Times said on August 11. Mohammed Junaid Babar allegedly made the confessions to the Federal District Court in Manhattan on June 3, 2004. He pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, according to a transcript of the court proceedings made public on August 10, the report said.

August 9: Two top Al Qaeda suspects have reportedly been arrested from Karachi and Peshawar on August 9. Mohsin, a Pakistani national who is allegedly linked to the assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf, was arrested from Karachi, an unnamed official was quoted as saying in an AFP report. The Uzbek national, identified as Mansoor, was arrested in Peshawar.

Security agencies in Lahore are reported to have arrested three foreigners for their alleged links to the Al Qaeda. According to Dawn, they were arrested during separate raids at a seminary and a rented house in the city. Two of the foreigners are said to be of Turkish origin and the third from an unnamed African country. However, Lahore police chief Tariq Saleem said "Neither any such raid nor is any arrest in our knowledge."

August 8: According to Daily Times, a senior Al Qaeda operative, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, leader of Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami (HuJI), has been arrested in Dubai and handed over to Islamabad. Qari was linked to two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf and has been described by one source as "an operational head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan". He was reportedly with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar in Afghanistan at the time of the US-led war against the Taliban late in 2001 and fled first to Saudi Arabia and subsequently to United Arab Emirates.

August 5: Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said in Islamabad that security agencies have arrested 20 suspected terrorists, including Al Qaeda operatives, during the last three weeks. While indicating that some high-value Al Qaeda targets were among those detained, he refused to disclose the identities of these persons.

August 3: Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat disclosed in Islamabad that two more "high value" Al Qaeda terrorists of African origin were arrested from Punjab. "The head money on these terrorists was also in millions of dollars," he said while addressing a press conference. He also said that the latest arrests were based on information secured from the interrogation of Tanzanian Al Qaeda operative Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, arrested earlier from Gujarat.

According to Daily Times, a police constable in Punjab Chief Minister Choudhury Pervaiz Elahi’s security squad has been arrested for allegedly passing on information to Al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits on the movement of important persons.

July 31: A group claiming to be linked to the Al Qaeda network said that it had tried to assassinate Pakistan’s Prime Minister-designate Shaukat Aziz and warned of more attacks against 'pro-US' officials. The Islambouli Brigades did not name Shaukat Aziz in the statement posted on an Islamist website, but said it had targeted one of the men of the "American infidel in Pakistan". Lt Khaled Islambouli was the leader of the group of soldiers, who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat during a military parade in Cairo in 1981.

July 29: Pakistan disclosed that it had arrested a senior Al Qaeda terrorist wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people. Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat identified the man as Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and said he was a Tanzanian national carrying a head money of $25 million. The Minister stated Ghailani was one of the 12 persons arrested on July 27 when security forces raided a suspected terrorist hideout in the city of Gujarat, about 175 km southeast of the capital Islamabad.

July 25: Security forces arrested 13 suspected terrorists, including four foreigners and some members of their families, from a house in Gujrat after a 14-hour gunfight that left at least one police personnel wounded. However, there was no official confirmation on the nationalities of the foreigners and if the arrested men belonged to the Al Qaeda network. "Yes, (I can only confirm that) they are terrorists," Punjab Law Minister Muhammad Basharat Raja told Dawn. Referring to their nationalities, he said: "At this moment I can only say that they are foreigners."

July 16: At least twenty-four Al Qaeda-trained terrorists are still hiding in Karachi, said a top police official, Tariq Jamil, on July 16. They plot attacks while subsidiary cells provide cover in Karachi city, Jamil was quoted as saying in Daily Times, adding that the 24 were the top of a three-tier operational hierarchy. "The second tier provides logistic support and pinpoints potential targets while the third tier is made up of extremely motivated executioners," he said. The official also said the cells operated in small groups and had no central command structure. Security agencies are reportedly unable to ascertain the strength of the second and third tiers.

July 12: The Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview that terrorists trained in Pakistan were crossing over into his country, adding that his regime was raising this issue with Islamabad on a "daily basis". Karzai told New York Times that he was concerned about the training in Pakistan of terrorists, who then cross over and carry out attacks in Afghanistan.

July 9: Cyprus is reported to have deported ten Pakistanis for suspected terrorist links. According to Daily Times, ten Pakistani students were deported after being detained by Cyprus police on suspicion of belonging to the Al Qaeda network. One of the suspects, reportedly trained in avionic engineering, had arrived in Cyprus to pursue a course in Hotel Management. "I can’t tell you whether they are members of al-Qaeda, we are not sure of that, but it is certain that they fit the profile of terror suspects," an unnamed Cypriot security source told Reuters. The men, who were enrolled at a private Cypriot college in the holiday resort of Larnaca, were arrested on July 7.

July 1: An Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) in Karachi on July 1 indicted nine activists of the proscribed Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Al-alami (HuMA) for their involvement in the Macedonian consulate bomb blast case. According to prosecution, the accused killed three persons on December 5, 2002, in premises of the Macedonian consulate in Karachi and later blasted the office with explosives. The Macedonian police on May 1, 2004, had acknowledged that the killing of Pakistanis was staged to win United States’ support and that the victims were innocent illegal immigrants.

June 30: According to Daily Times, the Special Investigation Group (SIG) of the police in Islamabad conducted a raid on a house at Mullaha Rajagan on June 30 and arrested three Iraqi nationals and later recovered so