Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan’s army said it arrested a senior al-Qaeda leader, Younis al-Mauritani, responsible for the militant group’s international operations, with help from U.S. intelligence agencies.
The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate captured Al- Mauritani and two other al-Qaeda operatives, Abdul Ghaffar al- Shami and Messara al-Shami in the southwestern city of Quetta, the military’s press office said in an e-mailed statement. The arrest, which follows months of U.S.-Pakistani tension over counter-terrorism cooperation, is part of “a strong, historic intelligence relationship” between the agency known as ISI and U.S. intelligence agencies, the statement said.
“Al-Mauritani was tasked personally by Osama bin Laden to focus on hitting targets of economical importance in the United States of America, Europe and Australia” and envisioned attacks on “gas/oil pipelines, power-generating dams” and oil tankers or other ships, the army statement said.
The announcement comes two weeks after U.S. officials say an American missile killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who had become al-Qaeda’s deputy leader following the killing in May of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan.
While Abd al-Rahman was a well-known figure, described by the U.S. government as a central al-Qaeda leader, al-Mauritani hasn’t been prominent in analysts’ accounts of its leadership and has not previously been named as its operational leader. Among the few earlier public references to him, the German news magazine Der Spiegel last year cited sources it did not name as saying he had met German Islamic militants in Pakistan to discuss attacks on economic targets in Europe.
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