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 kill President Pervez Musharraf could lead them to Osama bin Laden.
Intelligence agents said they had separately recaptured an air force officer who escaped jail late last year after being sentenced to death in one of the assassination plots masterminded by top terror suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi.
In another apparent coup, officials said a second militant seized on Monday with al-Libbi, who has a five-million-dollar US bounty on his head, was himself a key Al-Qaeda figure with a reward tag of four million dollars.
However they would not name the other terror suspect, saying it could harm efforts by Pakistani interrogators to extract information from al-Libbi about bin Laden.
"The man arrested with al-Libbi is an important Al-Qaeda operative, but we cannot disclose his name. We understand the bounty on his head is four million dollars," a senior government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The official declined to give any other details.
Security agents disguised in burqas, the all-covering garments worn by women in conservative Islamic areas, seized Al-Libbi and the other suspect on Monday after a shootout in Mardan, 120 kilometres (74 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
He was flown by helicopter to Islamabad and was being held in custody at an undisclosed location, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said.
Al-Libbi was also Pakistan's most wanted man and could face the death penalty for the two Musharraf assassination attempts in December 2003, which the president has personally accused him of masterminding.
Junior air force official Mushtaq Ahmed, 26, was sentenced to death in November for his role in the bombing of a bridge which collapsed moments after Musharraf's convoy had passed through in December 2003.
He escaped jail soon afterwards but was arrested last week on a bus near Islamabad on a tip off despite having changed his appearance by shaving off his beard, a security official told AFP.
Officials said they were not aware of any link between Ahmed's recapture and the arrest of al-Libbi.
Al-Libbi took over Al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan after the arrest in March 2003 of Khalid Sheikh 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.
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.
"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.
The Libyan and an associate were riding 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.
The pillion rider, believed to be al-Libbi, opened fire and escaped, taking shelter in a nearby house.
However the owner of the two-room house, Khalid Khan, told AFP that several security men, some of whom disguised in burqas, fired teargas shells into the house and whisked him away.
A copy of a classified US Central Intelligence Agency 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.
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 14:18 GMT