Counter-terrorism police in Pakistan have arrested Aminul Haq, a former Afghan bodyguard of the late al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
Usman Akram Gondal of the counter-terrorism police said Haq, who once headed Bin Laden’s elite security unit, was arrested in the city of Gujrat.
He said that Haq’s name is on the United Nations’ list of global terrorists and he was previously arrested in Pakistan in 2007.
Aminul Haq, a former Afghan bodyguard of the late al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden
Haq went into hiding after he was released from a Pakistani jail in 2011 and reappeared in the Afghan region of Nangarhar in 2021 after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.
Gondal said Haq recently entered Pakistan and that the purpose of his visit was being investigated.
The al-Qaeda leader carried Afghan and fake Pakistani identity documents that he used to travel with, the officer said.
The counter-terrorism police raided the compound he was staying in on an intelligence tip suggesting his presence in the Gujrat area, Gondal said.
Haq is the first high-profile al-Qaeda figure who has been arrested in Pakistan since the fall of neighbouring Afghanistan to the Taliban.
U.S. forces killed bin Laden in his residential compound in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad in a raid in 2011.
Several Arab, Afghan and Pakistani al-Qaeda leaders were killed in the country in U.S. drone strikes in subsequent years, resulting in the weakening of the once formidable global terror network.
According to recent UN reports, the group has been seeking a resurgence in the region since Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
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