FBI agents question arrested Westerners over al-Qa'ida links
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Your support makes all the difference.A number of American citizens and other Westerners who formed part of an al-Qa'ida "international brigade" have been arrested by Pakistani authorities close to the country's border with Afghanistan, senior officials say.
The officials are also investigating possible links between the alleged "dirty bomber", Abdullah al-Muhajir, and Richard Reid, the Briton charged with trying to blow up a transatlantic airliner with explosives packed into his shoes.
In recent weeks several men have been taken into custody and are being questioned by FBI agents. One, identified as Ahmed Mohammed, is said to be an associate of Mr Muhajir, whose arrest last month at O'Hare airport, Chicago, was announced earlier this week.
The claims, reported yesterday in The New York Times, refer to a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who have converted to Islam and joined radical groups.
Pakistani officials said about 400 suspected members of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban had been arrested since December, about 300 of whom have been turned over to the US. How many Westerners are among those being held is not clear.
But the announcement earlier this week that Brooklyn-born Mr Muhajir had been arrested while allegedly plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in Washington has again focused attention on Westerners who have joined radical Muslim groups.
Pakistani officials believe many of those recently arrested studied with Mufti Mohammed Iltimas, who runs a religious school in Bannu, a village close to the Afghan border. The so-called "American Taliban", John Walker Lindh, and Mr Reid are both believed to have attended the school.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said yesterday he was confident Pakistan was doing everything it could to round up al-Qa'ida operatives.
* Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, told a court in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday that he played no role in the 11 September attacks in America. Mr Moussaoui, 34, the only person charged over the attacks, told District Judge Leonie Brinkema that the government "knew I was not in contact with these people who were to have done the hijacking". The French citizen was arrested in August last year after arousing suspicions at a flight school in the Midwest. At the hearing the judge ruled that he should be allowed to represent himself at the trial starting in September.
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