Pakistan Bags Top Al Qaeda Suspect, Several Arrests

From Reuters

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan arrested a suspected member of al Qaeda with a multi-million-dollar price on his head and several others, government officials said Tuesday.

Arrests over the last three days in Pakistan follow on from an earlier sweep for militants which led to information of a possible attack in the United States and a subsequent rise in the U.S. state of alert.

"We have arrested in the past 24 hours from Punjab another two people of African origin who in our view have links to al Qaeda," Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told Reuters.

"Before that another person was arrested who has a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head," the minister added, but he declined to give any further details on the big catch.

The crackdown on militants in Pakistan has apparently gathered pace since the capture of a computer engineer who acted as an e-mail postman for the groups by distributing coded messages. The New York Times said he was arrested in mid-July.

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