Pakistan frees al-Qaeda operative after 3 yrs in jail

Khan, captured in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore in July 2004, has also been linked with terror plots in the US and Britain and the arrests of suspects in Britain.

Deputy attorney general Naheeda Mehboob Ilahi said in the Supreme Court on Monday that Khan had been released and had returned to his home in the southern city of Karachi.

He provided no details. The court has been pressing the government for information on dozens of people whose relatives say they were picked up and held incognito by Pakistani intelligence agents for alleged links to militants.

Khan’s lawyer, Babar Awan, confirmed that his client had returned to his family. Awan said Khan had never been charged with any crime or brought before any court.

Khan, an engineering graduate, was suspected of being a point man who sent coded e-mails to al-Qaeda operatives possibly planning attacks in the United States, Britain and South Africa.

Twelve days after his arrest, Pakistani authorities pounced in the city of Gujrat on Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who had a $25 million bounty on him for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Information from those captured, including maps and photos found on their computers, helped prompt the US government to issue a warning about a possible al-Qaeda attack on financial institutions in New York and Washington.

Clues gained after Khan’s arrest helped British investigators nab Dhiren Barot, a confessed al-Qaeda terrorist sentenced last year to life imprisonment for plots to bomb US financial targets such as the New York Stock Exchange and London hotels and train stations.