ISLAMABAD - Pakistani security officials said Thursday they hoped the capture of a Libyan accused of being Al-Qaeda's number three and of planning to attack the United States and Britain could lead them to Osama bin Laden.
Interrogators were trying to extract information from Abu Faraj al-Libbi, also the suspected mastermind of two attempts to kill Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, officials told AFP.
"Men like him are hardened people and they don't easily break -- it took some time before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed revealed anything. But definitely Al-Libbi is a close lieutenant of Osama bin Laden," one security official said on condition of anonymity.
Al-Libbi took over Al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan after the arrest in March 2003 of Mohammed, the key planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and the network's former third in command, officials said.
Pakistan announced on Wednesday that it had captured 40-year-old Al-Libbi two days earlier, after a brief shootout with security agents who apprehended him as he was riding a motorbike in the remote northwestern town of Mardan.
"He was the man who was heading the cell that plotted attacks on Britain and the United States before the US election last November," another senior security official told AFP.
US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have hailed Al-Libbi's arrest as a major victory in the war on terrorism.
A copy of a classified CIA list seen by AFP put Al-Libbi at number three in the Al-Qaeda hierarchy after Bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
It says he has a five million dollar bounty on his head and goes on to describe him as "senior Al-Qaeda operations commander and personal assistant of bin Laden."
"Al-Libbi is one of bin Laden's closest confidants and he should be able to provide new leads about both Osama and Ayman Al-Zawahiri," another security official involved in anti-Al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Al-Libbi was also Pakistan's most wanted man and could face the death penalty for the Musharraf assassination attempts in December 2003.
The Libyan and an associate were moving on a motorbike from a nearby hideout in Mardan which had earlier been raided to another when security officials in a Suzuki car stopped them at gunpoint, a witness said.
They were asked to surrender but the pillion rider, believed to be Al-Libbi, opened fire and escaped. "He took shelter in my house and hid himself in a room," the owner of the two-room house, Khalid Khan, told AFP.
He said several security men, some of whom were hiding in a nearby graveyard disguised in women's burqas, then surrounded the house.
After locating the suspect hiding in a room they started firing teargas shells. "The suspect came out and the security men pounced on him and whisked him away," Khan said.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said Al-Libbi had been airlifted by helicopter to Islamabad after his capture and was now being interrogated by Pakistani security forces at an undisclosed location.
Security officials were tight-lipped about the identity of the suspect arrested with Al-Libbi. They said they arrested two more suspects from the earlier raid and recovered a number of computer disks.
Pakistan said it had arrested 14 more Al-Qaeda suspects including a woman on Wednesday in the northwestern Bajaur tribal belt near the Afghan border. Officials said the operation was not linked to Al-Libbi's capture.
Police tightened security around the US consulate in Pakistan's largest city Karachi and other sensitive installations following the arrest. "We have declared high alert to prevent any retaliation," police chief Tariq Jamil said.
The capture of al-Libbi is the latest in a string of key arrests by Pakistan since Musharraf allied himself with Washington after September 11.

05/05/2005 09:35 GMT