by Kamran Khan and Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post
KARACHI, Pakistan — Ramzi Binalshibh, the man who may know more than anyone alive about the planning and origins of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other al-Qaida suspects were handed over to U.S. officials yesterday and whisked out of Pakistan. The suspects were taken on an unmarked CIA plane, bound for interrogation at a secret location, officials in Washington and Pakistan said.
Pakistani authorities said that in the three days they held Binalshibh, he readily admitted to his involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks but refused to disclose the location of other al-Qaida operatives and hide-outs.
The plan when Binalshibh and the others were captured Friday was to take them to Afghanistan, where a number of newly captured al-Qaida figures have been transferred for interrogation, according to a U.S. government source. But yesterday, U.S. officials kept his destination secret.
Investigators consider Binalshibh the most important figure in the Sept. 11 plot to be apprehended, but his legal status is in limbo. The White House said President Bush hasn’t decided if Binalshibh will be tried before a military tribunal.
Binalshibh, who in an interview aired last week by the Arabic-language TV network Al-Jazeera boasted of having supplied money and logistical support to the 19 hijackers, would have died with them had he not been refused a U.S. visa, investigators believe.
He was interviewed briefly by CIA and FBI agents before being flown out of the country, according to a Pakistani official. “Americans think that it may take weeks before Ramzi’s interrogation is completed from all possible angles,” the official said.
Five other al-Qaida suspects arrested in bloody raids last week on hide-outs in Karachi remained in Pakistan, under police investigation for their possible roles in the January murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Two key suspects in the Pearl murder now in custody, Fazal Karim and Attaur Rehman, have told police that the man who slit Pearl’s throat was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an al-Qaida operations leader who appeared with Binalshibh in a recent Al-Jazeera documentary praising the Sept. 11 attacks.
One of those arrested in last week’s raids is a brother of one of the alleged organizers of the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, according to a U.S. official.
Binalshibh told Pakistani interrogators of his admiration for hijack ringleader Mohamed Atta, with whom he lived in Hamburg as the conspiracy developed. “Mohamed Atta, my friend, was such a great hero that coming generations of Muslims would decorate their living rooms with his pictures,” he said in broken English, according to one interrogator.
Another Pakistani interrogator said that Binalshibh justified his actions with “tales of repression of Muslims at the hands of infidels in Israel and Kashmir.”
The Pakistani government cited the transfer yesterday as a new sign of its help against al-Qaida. “By handing over these al-Qaida suspects to the U.S., we have made another major contribution to the global war against terrorism,” Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, press assistant to President Pervez Musharraf, said in Karachi.
A senior Pakistani interior-ministry official said that as with all other al-Qaida suspect cases in Pakistan, no formal extradition process was completed for Ramzi. “Ramzi and four al-Qaida suspects were just (turned over) to the U.S. authorities under an agreement between the two countries,” he said.
Pakistani officials have said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, Pakistan has handed over about 200 non-Pakistani terrorism suspects to the United States.
In most cases they were transferred at Pakistani airports to U.S. authorities, who put them aboard unmarked CIA flights to undisclosed destinations.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the capture of al-Qaida suspects is weakening the terror organization.
“The more of these people that are rolled up and put in jail and interrogated, the more difficult it is to recruit, the more difficult it is to retain people, the more difficult it is to raise money, the more difficult it is to transfer money, the more difficult it is for those folks to move between countries, the more careful they have to be in everything they do,” Rumsfeld said.
He said investigators have gathered “an awful lot of information” from al-Qaida captives that “has made life an awful lot more difficult for an awful lot of folks.”
Bush said yesterday of Binalshibh’s arrest, “He’s the one that thought he was going to be the 20th bomber. He thought he could hide. He thought he could still threaten America. But he forgot the greatest nation on the face of the Earth is after them, one person at a time.”