[Dawn] Pak security forces have tossed in the slammer senior Al-Qaeda operative Muhammad Ali Qasim Yaqub, alias Abu Sohaib Al Makki, in the southern port city of Bloody Karachi, the military said Tuesday."According to preliminary investigations, Al Makki is a Yemeni national and has been working directly under Al-Qaeda leaders along Pak-Afghan borders," the military's media wing said.
"The arrest of Al Makki is a major development in unravelling the Al-Qaeda network operating in the region," it said.
The arrest follows a US covert operation in the garrison city of Abbottabad near Islamabad on May 2 that killed Al-Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden,
... who is currently taking a long nap in the dirt... urm... water...
and comes a day after US senator John
I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, the Senate's current
foreign policy expert, filling the vacated wingtips of Joe Biden...
visited Pakistain to smooth a damaging row caused by the raid.
... and brought up the subject of money...
Pakistain's civilian and military leaders were left angry and embarrassed after the unilateral US assault that killed the Al-Qaeda chief, who had been living, possibly for years, two hours drive from the capital.
The raid rocked the country's powerful security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over the presence of bin Laden in a suburban house in Abbottabad.
Al Makki is apparently not on the list of internationally most wanted Al-Qaeda operatives but the military's statement mentioned his network was operating in the region.
His arrest came a day after a Soddy Arabian diplomat was killed in a hail of bullets on his way to the Saudi consulate in Bloody Karachi.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik
Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Näwaz Shärif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men.
blamed Al-Qaeda for the attack which was the second on Saudi interests in Pakistain's biggest city in less than a week, media reports said.