CIA watched al-Yemeni for clues to Osama’s location

An Al Qaeda figure killed last week by a missile from a CIA-operated unmanned aerial drone had been under surveillance for more than a week ...

An Al Qaeda figure killed last week by a missile from a CIA-operated unmanned aerial drone had been under surveillance for more than a week by US intelligence and military personnel working along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a US official and two counter-terrorism experts said on Saturday.

The US team was hoping Haitham al-Yemeni would lead them to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said two counter-terrorism experts— both former senior US intelligence officials with knowledge of events surrounding the attack. But after Pakistani authorities captured Al Qaeda leader Abu Faraj al-Libbi early this month, CIA officials became concerned al-Yemeni would go into hiding and decided to try to kill him instead, said the experts. ‘‘We had been working hard to see what he would do,’’ said an expert, referring to al-Yemeni.

Al-Yemeni is not listed by that name in either the FBI or Pakistani ‘Most Wanted’ list, but the active surveillance suggests his importance. The CIA declined comment. Pakistan’s information minister denied that any such incident, which was first reported by ABC News, even happened. ‘‘No such incident took place near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border,’’ Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told AP on Saturday.

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The sources said the Predator drone, operated from a secret base hundreds of miles from the target, located and fired on al-Yemeni late Saturday night in Toorikhel, a suburb in North Waziristan.

On May 8, Dawn reported two people were killed on Saturday by a car bomb. The newspaper, quoting officials, said the car was destroyed and one victim was mutilated beyond recognition. It identified the second victim as Samiullah Khan.

The Predator and other unmanned aerial vehicles have become some of the most successful new weapons for killing small groups of people or individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq. Al-Yemeni’s death is one of only a handful of known incidents in which the CIA has fired the remote-controlled, missile-equipped Predator to kill an Al Qaeda member.

—LATWP

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