Suspected al Qaeda militant caught in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD - A suspected al Qaeda militant has been killed and another captured during a shoot-out with Pakistani security men in the southwestern city of Quetta.

Al Jazeera television said it had received a statement that two people had been arrested, identifying one as Mustafa Setmariam, a Syrian with a $5 million US reward on his head.

But Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said authorities were still trying to determine if the arrested man was Setmariam. He believed neither the arrested man nor the man killed in the shoot-out were "high-value targets".

"They are Arabs but their nationality is not yet known," Ahmed said.

"We don't know the identity of the one who was killed or arrested. Apparently they are not high-value targets but they're hiding their identities. It takes time to establish their exact identity."

Al Jazeera television said the two suspected al Qaeda militants had been arrested in Quetta on Monday.

The US State Department late last year posted a reward of $5 million for information on the whereabouts of an al Qaeda member identified as Mustafa Setmariam Nasar.

It said he was a former trainer at militant camps in Afghanistan where he taught the use of poisons and chemicals. Nasar was a Syrian with dual Spanish nationality, the State Department said.

A police official in Quetta said the man killed in the shoot-out was believed to be a Saudi national and identified him as Sheikh Ali Mohammad Saleem.

Two suspects had been arrested, said the police official in the city near the border with Afghanistan.

"Their faces were covered with wheat sacks after their arrest," the official said.

Sources close to the investigation into the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings have said Setmariam may have played a leading role in the attacks that killed 191 people.

But Spanish officials said on Thursday that Spain had not issued a warrant for his arrest over the attacks.

The Spanish government has received no official information from Pakistan about the arrested man, a government source said.

Setmariam is wanted in connection with another Spanish case.

He was one of 35 people, including Osama bin Laden, charged by a Spanish judge in September 2003 with al Qaeda membership.

Twenty-four of the group were put on trial in Spain earlier this year and 18 were convicted of a crime.

They included Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, leader of an al Qaeda cell in Spain, who was jailed for 27 years in September for leading a terrorist group and conspiracy to commit terrorist murder in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks on US cities.

Prosecutor Pedro Rubia said during the trial that only Setmariam stood between Barakat Yarkas and bin Laden.

- REUTERS