Key Al Qaeda courier seized, U.S. says

A suspected Al Qaeda operative who is believed to be a link between the terrorist network’s headquarters in Pakistan and its East African cell has been captured and taken to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Defense officials identified the detainee as Abdullahi Sudi Arale, and described him as both a known terrorist and a leader of the Islamic militant political organization that ruled large portions of Somalia last year before being routed by Ethiopian troops.

“We believe him to be an extremely dangerous member of the Al Qaeda network,” said Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman.

The Pentagon said it suspected that Arale was acting as a courier between Al Qaeda members in East Africa and senior Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and providing weapons and explosives to the African cell and its affiliates.

Arale, whose age and country of origin were not released, was captured within the past few weeks and taken into U.S. custody somewhere “in the Horn of Africa region,” Whitman said, adding that Arale arrived at the Guantanamo prison camp on Cuba sometime this week.

Whitman said he would not provide more information about Arale and his detention because it “could compromise ongoing operations,” in East Africa, where U.S. and allied forces have been actively hunting Al Qaeda leaders and extremist groups believed to be sheltering them.

Last Friday, at least eight foreign and an unspecified number of Somali Islamic militants were killed in fighting with Somali government forces and during bombardment from a U.S. warship.

Arale’s alleged role as a courier and a weapons provider fits the pattern of recent intelligence that has shown active communication and cooperation between Al Qaeda’s headquarters in Afghanistan and, more recently, in Pakistan, and the organization’s resurgent East Africa operation, according to Whitman and two U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

The intelligence suggests that some East African Al Qaeda operatives and their affiliates have gone to Pakistan for training and strategizing, and that money and guidance has flowed from headquarters out to Al Qaeda cells in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and other nearby countries, according to the two counter-terrorism officials.

They both spoke on the condition of anonymity because their government agencies do not allow them to be identified by name or agency in print.

“Obviously, it is not regular contact, but it is contact. You’re talking more about providing guidance, resources, things on a strategic level, not tactical guidance, as in ‘hit this or that.’ That’s not the way these guys work,” one of the officials said of Al Qaeda’s central leadership, headed by Osama bin Laden.

The official confirmed that Arale was considered important as a courier and purveyor of weapons for Al Qaeda, and said he could provide a windfall of information about its operations on two continents. “He definitely was a facilitator. This is someone whose role as a courier gave him knowledge of East Africa operations for Al Qaeda and some reach-back into Al Qaeda central or the core Al Qaeda” in Pakistan, the official said.

The Pentagon statement said there was “significant information available” indicating that Arale also helped facilitate terrorist travel by providing false documents for Al Qaeda, its East African affiliates and foreign fighters traveling into Somalia.

Al Qaeda members operating out of Somalia and neighboring countries, but overseen by Bin Laden, launched two of the terrorist network’s deadliest attacks in 1998, killing at least 224 people at two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Several of those Al Qaeda members, notably Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, are still at large and believed to be trying to hatch mass-casualty attacks from the region, perhaps in coordination with leaders in Pakistan.

One of the U.S. officials said Mohammed was the target of last week’s military action, but would not comment on whether Arale was also a target or whether he was caught during the strikes.

The Pentagon said Arale returned from Pakistan to Somalia in September 2006, and that he has since held a leadership role in the Somali Council of Islamic Courts, a coalition of groups that tried to seize control of the country from a U.S.-supported transitional government last year.

Late last year, U.S. special operations forces helped Ethiopian troops drive the courts council and its supporters into hiding. The Pentagon on Wednesday said Arale played a “significant role in the reemergence of the Council of Islamic Courts in Mogadishu,” the Somali capital.

John Prendergast, director of African Affairs for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said Arale was a member of the Islamic Courts, and “someone who has been sought by the CIA for some time now.”

But Prendergast cautioned that many U.S. officials had overstated the danger of Al Qaeda’s East Africa operations, which he described as “a very small cell of people traveling in and out.” U.S. officials also “have certainly vastly overstated the connections between the Islamic Courts and Al Qaeda,” said Prendergast, who is now an East Africa expert for the nonpartisan International Crisis Group.

The Pentagon statement said Arale would undergo a combatant status review tribunal like all other detainees at Guantanamo, and be given the opportunity to review an unclassified summary of the evidence against him and contest his enemy combatant status.

Counting Arale, there are now approximately 385 detainees at Guantanamo, the Pentagon said.

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josh.meyer@latimes.com