Al-Qaeda in the Net

• Share

Pakistani intelligence officials patiently tracked the potato truck all the way from the tribal hinterlands near the Afghanistan border to the port city of Karachi. Then they pounced, capturing a Yemeni al-Qaeda leader named Waleed Muhammad bin Attash along with five Pakistanis who had stashed 330 pounds of explosives and weapons under the produce. Another big fish netted in the raid was Ali Abd al-Aziz, a bin Laden bagman who, U.S. officials tell TIME, funneled nearly $120,000 to the Sept. 11 hijackers. Aziz could help expose details of the secret financial networks used by al-Qaeda to fund its past and future operations.

Last week's raid of the terrorists' lair yielded an additional 770 pounds of explosives—in all, enough to level a city block. It was a timely haul, to say the least. U.S. officials believe Attash and his cohorts had imminent plans to load the explosives into a small plane and crash it into the American consulate in Karachi. That prompted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to issue an advisory to pilots and aircraft rental companies urging them to secure their planes. "Just because these six have been arrested, it doesn't mean there's no longer a concern," warns one official.

The arrests could also help investigators unravel the inner workings of al-Qaeda. FBI sources say Attash, a key suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, attended a meeting that January in Kuala Lumpur where al-Qaeda leaders mapped out the Sept. 11 attacks. And because Attash once worked as one of bin Laden's bodyguards—until losing a foot several years ago in Afghanistan—investigators hope to press him about the whereabouts of his boss.