Al Qaeda strategist handed over to US by Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, May 24: A leading al Qaeda member, who had a 5 million dollar bounty on his head and is wanted in Spain for possible links to the 2004 bombings, has been handed over to U.S.

agents, Pakistani intelligence officers said today.

Ideologue and strategist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, a Syrian holding a Spanish passport, was handed over to U S agents at least two months ago after being caught in Pakistan last year, they said.

''I can confirm that Abu Musab al-Suri is no more under detention in Pakistan,'' a senior Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

''Suri was handed over to the Americans,'' he said, adding he was handed over in March this year after repeated demands by the United States.

Washington has not confirmed Nasar is in U S custody. Two U S officials contacted today declined to comment.

Nasar's arrest has never been officially confirmed by the Pakistani government, usually quick to take credit for any major al Qaeda catch but have remained silent in this case.

But Pakistani intelligence officials said Nasar was caught in the southwest city of Quetta on October 31 after a gunbattle.

An ex-CIA official who maintains contact with former colleagues in the intelligence community said Nasar was subsequently turned over to U S officers.

''Because he's considered a potentially valuable source of intelligence, he's in the same category of detainee as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. You won't be seeing him at Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay) or in public,'' said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

IMPORTANT IDEOLOGUE A security analyst with knowledge of Nasar's case believes he is being held in an undisclosed West Asia country along with other high value al Qaeda prisoners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the brains behind the September 11, 2001, attacks. ''He's the most important ideologue in U S control and he's of exceptional importance to a number of countries whose security agencies would like access to him for questioning,'' said Rohan Gunaratna, an analyst at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore.

Nasar is believed to have been particularly influential among North African groups.

Other analysts believe Nasar may have been a strategic thinker for al Qaeda, but not a pivotal player.

''It sounds like he is a post-September 11 thinker on what direction the movement should take. I am not convinced that he is a kingpin or can order an attack or direct assets to an attack,'' said Ken Katzman, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service, the in-house think tank of the U S Congress in Washington.

Nasar's exhaustive treatise ''Call to Global Islamic Resistance'' is regarded by some experts as one of the seminal texts on global ''jihad'', which means holy war in this context. It was posted on the Internet in the last couple of years.

The red-haired Syrian, born in 1958, was the most prolific writer among four Muslim scholars credited by analysts with popularising the global cause of militant Islam in recent years.

Of the other three Mohammed al-Maqdisi, reportedly a mentor of al Qaeda's leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is in a Jordanian jail, while Abu Qatada al-Falastini and Abu Hamza al-Masri are both in British custody.

Nasar fled Syria in the 1980s and married a Spanish woman through whom he gained Spanish citizenship. By the mid-1990s, by then based in London, he had become part of the al Qaeda network, according to the Rewards for Justice entry.

He joined Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the late 1990s before striking out on his own to form new Islamist groups, but returned to fight in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.

Since then he is believed to have been confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has written a strategic paper on bringing Pakistan back to the Islamist militant fold, starting by eliminating President Pervez Musharraf.

Reuters