Captured Al-Qaeda 3rd in Command Case of Mistaken Identity.

[Now with confusing update; see below.]

Last Thursday gave some very good news about the capture of Al-Qaeda's 3rd in command . Apparently this news and any congratulations were rather premature; just when we thought we had some good news from The War Against Terrorism. [TWAT for short]

From Britain's The Times:

The capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

There may not be an Al-Libbi, but there is an Anas al-Liby which is probably the source of confusion. Hey, if they haven't mastered the Queen's English by now, who would expect them to learn other languages?

Even a senior FBI official admitted that al-Libbi’s “influence and position have been overstated”. But this weekend the Pakistani government was sticking to the line that al-Libbi was the third most important person in the Al-Qaeda network.

One American official tried to explain the absence of al-Libbi’s name on the wanted list by saying: “We did not want him to know he was wanted.”

Sure, that was it.

In related news, speculation suggests that Al-Qaeda may have moved its base of operations from Afghanistan to Pakistan, with the country's Interior Minister conceding that Bin Laden may be hiding there.

[via Eschaton]

Update: A TIME Magazine story seemingly verifies that the captured terrorist is not al-Libbi, but maintains that he was in fact caught earlier. Does anyone know what's going on?

According to an Islamabad intelligence source, the burqa-clad fugitive arrested by the Pakistani commandos last week was not al-Libbi but a local Pakistani militant. Al-Libbi, the source says, had been seized a few weeks earlier, but his arrest was hushed up so agents could pursue unsuspecting collaborators. U.S. counterterrorism sources insist on the official version. "We not only believe, we know it happened this week," a U.S. official told TIME.

[via Crooks and Liars]