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Al-Qaida leader captured, U.S. official says

The unnamed official reports that a former trainer at Osama bin Laden's terror camps was arrested in a November sting in Pakistan.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 3, 2006

Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, who once wrote a 1,600-page autobiographical book on ways to attack Islam's enemies, has been flown out of the country after being interrogated by Pakistani and American authorities, Pakistani officials told the Associated Press on Tuesday. They did not say where he was taken.

Terror analysts said Nasar's capture has dealt a blow to al-Qaida and other militant movements he aided through his virulent anti-Western writings and weapons training. His movements have been traced to Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and two European capitals.

Nasar, a 47-year-old Syrian-Spanish national, was seized in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta in November 2005, the Associated Press reported, citing the American official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. Nasar was arrested in a sting operation, which sparked a gunfight in which one person was killed, the official said.

The raid apparently took place Nov. 1. At the time, Pakistani officials said they had captured two possible al-Qaida suspects and a third man with ties to a Pakistani extremist group. Intelligence officials had said they were investigating whether one of the suspects was Nasar.

Nasar, an Islamic ideologue wanted by American and Spanish authorities for terror-related activities, "may have been turned over to the U.S." after his capture, the American official told the AP late last week. He would not say where Nasar may have been sent, and U.S. officials in Washington declined to comment Tuesday.

Pakistani and American officials have long been tight lipped on the status of Nasar, described by the U.S. Justice Department as a former trainer at Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan who helped teach extremists to use poisons and chemicals before the U.S.-led invasion after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said Nasar's capture dealt a major blow to al-Qaida and other radical Islamic movements as he was the "most prolific writer" of jihadi propaganda and had close links with extremists throughout Europe and South Asia.

"The ideologues are as equally important as the operational people, and he was in close contact with very prominent figures with movements in different countries, particularly the North African region," Gunaratna said.

Spanish authorities have previously said he may have played a pivotal role in the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people.

He is also wanted for a 1985 attack on a restaurant near a military base close to a Madrid airport that killed about 20 people - regarded as the first international Islamic terrorist attack in Spain.

A picture and short biography of Nasar was recently removed from the U.S. government's Rewards for Justice Web site. Justice and State Department officials declined to say why it was no longer online.

[Last modified May 3, 2006, 06:56:18]