Al Qaida commander openly met Pak, Libyan official

The terrorist leader from Libya had lived in northwestern Pakistan for years and “felt secure enough to meet officials and visit hospitals” in Peshawar, the Washington Post quoted officials and residents of the city as saying.

As he organised suicide bombings and other attacks in Afghanistan, Libi “found a comfortable refuge in Pakistan’s border region”, the paper quoted sources as saying.

He “met openly with a Pakistani politician and a Libyan diplomat and called on foreign fighters recovering from their wounds”.

The way in which Libi moved unchallenged around the heart of Peshawar, a city of 1.2 million people, underscored “how freely he and other Al Qaida leaders have been able to operate in Pakistan”, the report said.

On one occasion in 2006, Libi “strode into the central prison in Peshawar and another Libyan fighter sat behind bars in the custody of Pakistani authorities… the Al Qaida leader, the Pakistani politician and the Libyan diplomat argued over whether the militant should be deported against his wishes to Libya or released to fight another day, said Javed Ibrahim Paracha, the PML-N leader who helped arrange the meeting.

“I knew Abu Laith for quite some time,” said Paracha, a former member of the National Assembly who is contesting the February 18 general election.

Paracha called Libi “a good and pious Muslim” and said the terrorist leader “frequently visited hospitals in Peshawar and the nearby city of Bannu to check on foreign fighters who had been wounded fighting alongside the Taliban and other militant groups”.

A Pakistani prison official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed some details of Paracha’s account of the meeting and said it occurred 18 months ago.

The lack of progress in hunting Al Qaida commanders like Libi has “fuelled frustration among US, Afghan and European officials, who say Al Qaida and its Taliban allies regularly plan operations abroad from havens in Pakistan”, the report said.

The Pakistan government has said it will not allow US forces from conducting operations against Al Qaida elements on its soil. The last time a top Al Qaida leader was killed by Pakistani forces was about two years ago.

Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, an Egyptian who was indicted in the US for the bombing of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, was killed in April 2006 in a Pakistani airstrike in North Waziristan.

A few months after Libi visited the Peshawar jail, US military officers said he organised a suicide attack outside Bagram air base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney. At least 23 people were killed in the February 2007 bombing.

The Washington Post said intelligence reports had indicated that Libi was killed while he was on his way to meet with Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, who has been blamed for masterminding the assassination of former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto on December 27.

The identities of the other men killed in the missile strike are unknown. Libi was a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organisation founded in the early 1990s to topple Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.

The Libyan government has been trying to persuade the group to agree to a truce, which was partly why Libi had agreed to meet at the Peshawar prison with a diplomat from the Libyan embassy in Islamabad, said Paracha.

Paracha said the meeting led to further “interactions” between Libi and the Libyan government, though he declined to give details.

Paracha also said he had negotiated the release of hundreds of foreign fighters from Pakistani jails on the condition that they leave the country. “I’ve been doing this service for four years,” he said.

The PML-N leader’s efforts to mediate a peace deal between Libi and the Libyan government, however, went nowhere, said a Libyan source.