Pakistan arrests key aide to slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden

LAHORE, Pakistan — Authorities in Pakistan said Friday they had caught an internationally designated senior al-Qaida operative, describing him as a close aide of the terror network’s slain leader, Osama bin Laden.

The Counter-Terrorism Department, or CTD, in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, made the announcement, identifying the detainee as Amin ul Haq, an Afghan national, and accusing him of planning a “large-scale terrorism project” in Pakistan.

The statement said the terror suspect was apprehended during a successful "intelligence-based operation" in the town of Sarai Alamgir.

“Amin ul Haq was a close associate of Osama bin Laden since 1996 and was involved in many terrorist activities,” the CTD stated.

It noted that Haq’s name was included in the United Nations’ list of global terrorists, saying his arrest was “an important development in the ongoing efforts to combat terrorism” in Pakistan and globally.

Friday’s announcement came nearly two weeks after the U.N. Security Council sanctions monitoring team said in its latest report that Pakistani authorities had arrested Haq “for illegal possession of weapons while crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan in March 2024.” The report shared no further details.

It was not immediately known whether the United States played a role in helping Islamabad arrest the senior al-Qaida operative. The U.S. Treasury Department has listed Haq as a specially designated global terrorist.

According to the U.N. website, Haq, also known as Dr. Amin, coordinated security for bin Laden and was designated for "participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts" and “supplying, selling, or transferring arms and related material” to support activities of bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America, was killed by U.S. special forces during a 2011 raid on his hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

Haq served as bin Laden’s security chief at the Battle of Tora Bora with U.S. forces in late 2001 before fleeing to Pakistan. He emerged from years of hiding in his native eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar in August 2021, when the Taliban regained control of the country after all U.S.-led NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

Washington accused the then-Taliban government in Kabul of harboring al-Qaida leaders and allowing them to orchestrate the 9/11 terror strikes on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington.

The attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, prompted U.S. and allied troops to invade Afghanistan nearly a month later as part of the global “war on terror” and ousted the Taliban from power for refusing to surrender bin Laden.

The Taliban regrouped in neighboring Pakistan, allegedly with the support of that country’s spy agency, and waged insurgent attacks on U.S.-led foreign troops as well as their Afghan allies in the years that followed before reclaiming power on August 15, 2021.

The U.S. military says it killed or captured hundreds of al-Qaida members during its presence in Afghanistan and significantly degraded the terror network’s ability to threaten the United States and its allies.

However, the U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team report, released on July 10, 2024, said al-Qaida has established several new training camps in over a dozen Afghan provinces, and the group “still uses Afghanistan as a permissive haven under the Taliban, raising questions about Al-Qaida’s intent.”

The Taliban have repeatedly pledged they would not allow any foreign group to use Afghan territory to threaten other nations, but critics continue to question those claims.

A U.S. drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded bin Laden as al-Qaida leader, in a posh residential neighborhood in the Afghan capital in July 2022. The Taliban denounced the strike but has never acknowledged whether al-Zawahiri was present in Kabul, saying an investigation into the alleged incident was underway.

The U.N. stated in its report this month that militants linked to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a globally designated terrorist group, are also receiving training and being armed at al-Qaida training camps on Afghan soil, enabling them to intensify their cross-border attacks against Pakistan.