Author
Publication: Dawn, Karachi
Date: November 22, 2001
Lima, Nov 21: Peru said on Tuesday
it had arrested a Pakistani man on "terrorism" charges after coordination
with US and European intelligence agencies and Interpol.
Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi
said the 24-year-old man was arrested at the weekend in southern Peru and
was being brought to Lima for investigation. He gave no details of his
alleged crime. Officials could not supply his name.
Rospigliosi said Peruvian police
also detained two other Pakistanis who "are being investigated on the grounds
of apparently being illegal in Peru." He gave no further details.
"Through coordination and the work
of the (anti-terrorism police), we detected these people in Tacna," Rospigliosi
told a news conference. Tacna is some 1,300 km south of Lima, near the
Chilean border.
"The terrorist suspect is being
brought to the capital," he added. Under Peruvian law, police can hold
a terrorism suspect for 15 days pending investigation.
The arrests come after three people
of Arab origin, one with an Argentine passport who Peru says tried to enter
the United States days before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington,
were detained at the end of September on terrorism charges.
In the wake of the September attacks,
in which some 4,600 people died, the United States launched a bombing campaign
against Afghanistan to root out Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, the
man blamed by Washington for the attacks.-Reuters
