November 8, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Nobody is quite sure how big a fish Abu Faraj al-Libi is. He is styled both the chief of al Qaeda’s North African operations and a personal aide of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. But the Pakistani intelligence authorities have decided not to out him just as yet —perhaps a case of Musharraf hedging his bets in case of a Kerry victory.
Authoritative Asia Times Online contacts insist that Pakistani officials had earlier assured their US counterparts that Faraj would be presented as a surprise just before the US polls, and they speculate that Islamabad had a last-moment change of mind pending the outcome of those elections
Some sources suspected that Faraj might already be in the custody of Pakistani intelligence agencies awaiting a timely unveiling, but prior to Tuesday’s raid a senior official rejected this theory when questioned by Asia Times Online. “He is not in our custody, but not too far from our range though. We have been tracking his movements and he is very likely to be arrested very soon,” said the official. [Asia Times]The Libyan rabbit will very likely be pulled out either when the Bush administration sends its new Musharraf minders down or when the good General travels up to meet his handlers.
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