Anatomy Of A Raid

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Then Zubaydah and his companions pulled off a move that would have impressed any Hollywood stuntman. With a running start, they leaped off the cottage roof, sailed over the barbed-wire fencing and tumbled onto the neighboring villa's roof--a drop of 25 feet. They were immediately grabbed by four Pakistani cops waiting for them. Zubaydah was furious that fellow believers would act against him. "You're not Muslims!" he is said to have told the police disdainfully in English. "Of course we are," an officer replied. "Well, you're American Muslims," he sneered.

The taunting stopped when one of Zubaydah's comrades lunged at a cop and wrested away his AK-47. "There was a struggle for the gun, and Zubaydah was hit in the cross fire," Hussain says. He was shot in the stomach, the leg and possibly the groin. His gun-grabbing comrade, a Syrian named Abu al-Hasnat, was killed, and the third, unidentified suspect was also wounded, along with three officers. Once the al-Qaeda men were all handcuffed, the Americans moved in, comparing their catch--25 foreigners in all that night--to photos kept in a casebook of known al-Qaeda members. When one of the wounded matched up with Zubaydah's photo, "the FBI agents were very happy," says Hussain. "They applauded when they found out."

A trove of computer discs, notebooks and phone numbers discovered in the safe house should help investigators trace Zubaydah's web. A senior U.S. intelligence official says the take amounts to 10,000 pages of material. Most of this cache was flown back to the U.S. for analysis. "We know for certain that Abu Zubaydah was planning future terrorist attacks," this official said. Investigators are also intrigued by a roster taped up on a kitchen wall, which has "Osama" and "Abu Zubaydah" down for unspecified duties. Whether these chores were domestic or subversive in nature is not yet known. And investigators say there is no evidence that bin Laden was in the house. There were no weapons found. Says an Islamabad military officer: "These were men on the run."

In the U.S. and Europe, authorities were exultant over Zubaydah's arrest. American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said dryly, "There's no question but that having an opportunity to visit with him is helpful." He added, "Sometimes I understate for emphasis." French officials, who have been tracking the Palestinian far longer, were less laconic. Zubaydah's arrest, said a Paris official, represents "a serious blow to the al-Qaeda terror organization around the world and may significantly undermine its ability to plan and stage attacks."