ALL BARK, NO BITE:

Mystery surrounds convenient arrest of the al-Qa'ida mastermind 'behind 11 September' (Phil Reeves, 03 March 2003, Independent)

The United States badly needed a big victory in its war on al-Qa'ida to counter those critics who said that the violent and fanatically anti-Western network represents a far greater and more immediate threat to Americans than Iraq.

And now, just as its generals and Pentagon strategists apply the finishing touches to their plans to invade Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein, America says this is precisely what it has secured.

Pakistani agents, who have been working with the CIA and FBI, have, with immaculate timing, captured a man who is, by their account, almost as important as Osama bin Laden himself, an alleged mastermind of the 11 September atrocities that set off the current global crisis, a man of such criminal genius that – according to The Washington Post – he is known within the counter-intelligence world merely as "The Brain". Almost every big attack against the Americans and their allies by Islamist extremists over the past decade has been linked with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan at the weekend and – amid some confusion last night over whether he was in US or Pakistani custody – spirited off to a secret location.

He has been described by the White House as the central planner of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington and a "key al-Qa'ida planner". He has been referred to by others as al-Qa'ida's chief military operations officer, a conduit for money, people and plans throughout the Middle East, south Asia and Europe.

There have been suggestions that he was involved in the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, in which 224 people were killed.

Intelligence agents in the Philippines believe he was part of a cell that plotted to kill the Pope in 1995. His name has been linked with the attack on the US warship the USS Cole, in Yemen, in which 17 American sailors were killed in 2000.

His was the hand that allegedly drew the knife across the throat of a terrified Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped and killed in Karachi as he was investigating Islamist extremist groups. He has, it is said, 27 aliases, speaks five languages, and is – say the Americans – as smooth and unruffled in a sleazy nightclub or in a restaurant in North Carolina, where he studied engineering in Chowan College, as he is in a staunchly conservative Islamic home in Pakistan.

If all these allegations are true – and it remains a significant "if" – he is about as breathtakingly ruthless and sinister as they come, a man with the blood of thousands of people on his hands and a $25m American reward on his head.

The title and first few lines hint at a good conspiracy, and there's surely one coming, but then he backs off. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 2, 2003 9:39 PM