Sheikh Al Mauritani, described by a website as Al Qaeda’s ‘foreign minister’, was arrested from a compound on the suburbs of Quetta on an unspecified date along with two of his accomplices — Abdul Ghaffar Al Shami (Bachar Chama) and Messara Al Shami (Mujahid Amino).
They were taken into custody just before they were to set off for an African destination from where they were to execute the planned attacks on US targets, including strikes on ships and oil tankers, with the help of explosive- laden speed boats in international waters.
“He (Mauritani) was planning to target United States economic interests including gas/oil pipelines, power generating dams and strike ships/oil tankers through explosive laden speed boats in international waters,” the Reuters news agency quoted from a statement released by the military.
The capture of the three men, which came on the heels of the reported killing of Al Qaeda second in command Atiyah Abd al-Rahman in a drone attack last week, was termed “yet another fatal blow” to the outfit by ISPR.
Younis Mauritani formed part of Al Qaeda’s international operations cell along with Adnan el Shukrijuma and Ilyas Kashmiri, who was rumoured to have been killed in a drone strike earlier this year.
Mauritani was tasked with hitting targets of economic importance in Europe, the United States and Australia.
The detainees, a security official said, were in the custody of Pakistani agencies and CIA had not been provided access to them as yet.
The capture of the Al Qaeda men is, in a way, a sequel to the May 2 raid in Abbottabad in which Osama bin Laden was killed, but had put Pakistan-US ties on a downward spiral.
Mauritani had been on the watch of Western intelligence agencies for sometime, but he came to the limelight after US agents got hold of a strategy paper authored by him from the “treasure trove” they seized from Osama’s Abbottabad hideout.
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