AFGHANISTAN - Jan. 5 - US Took Custody Of Al Qaida Paramilitary Trainer & Former Taliban Ambassador To Pakistan.

According to US officials, Bin Laden's top paramilitary trainer Bin Shaikh Libi was captured by Pakistani officials as he tried to flee the country and was turned over to the US military late last week. (He is Libyan and the most senior Al Qaida member seized in the 3-month war. He was responsible for paramilitary training at a Bin Laden camp known as Al Khaldan. He is a close associate of Abu Zubaydah, one of Bin Laden's top confidants. Zubaydah is believed to have taken over as Al Qaida's top military strategist following the death of Mohammed Atef in a US air strike in November. Libi was one of 12 Al Qaida figures on the original list of individuals and organisations whose assets were frozen by Pres. Bush last September in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks). Libi is being held at a detention centre at the Kandahar airport and will soon be flown to the amphibious ship Bataan in the northern Arabian Sea. The Bataan is holding eight other high-profile prisoners, including John Walker, a 20-year-old Californian found fighting with the Taliban. The US also took custody of the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zayeef after Pakistan rejected his asylum request and sent him to Afghanistan. He was flown to the Bataan on Jan. 5 for questioning. (Zayeef became the international face of the Taliban in recent months through televised news conferences. Pakistan, apparently sensitive to the political nuances of its action, did not announce that the former ambassador was turned over to the US. Instead, a Pakistani spokesman said he was returned to Afghanistan because "he didn't any longer have a valid visa to stay").

The seizures of Libi and Mullah Zayeef represent a rare success in gaining control of senior Al Qaida or Taliban leaders. But US officials are expressing increasing confidence that they are homing in on senior terrorist leaders after interrogating Taliban and Al Qaida prisoners and recovering reams of documents and computer disks from terrorist safe houses across the country. US investigators are interrogating a total of 307 Taliban and Al Qaida prisoners at three sites in Afghanistan and aboard the Bataan. The first group of detainees is to be flown under heavy guard to a prison at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On Jan. 6, Pakistani Interior Minister Lt. Gen. Moinuddin Haider told the Okaz newspaper Pakistani authorities also detained about 240 Saudi nationals suspected having fled Afghanistan. He said anyone, regardless of nationality, who was found to belong to Al Qaida would be handed over to the US. Meanwhile, late on Jan. 5 US aircraft bombed several targets in the Spinghar mountain range, in the east of the country, flying at least six sorties over the area. The jets were targeting suspected remnants of Al Qaida network.