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Uzair Paracha planned attacks in the US after 9/11: Newsweek

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that Uzair Paracha, the young Pakistani arrested for his links to Al Qaeda, was assigned by Khaled Sheikh Mohammed to help maintain the cover of a key Al Qaeda operative based in Baltimore who was planning attacks in the United States after 9/11.

According to the latest issue of Newsweek magazine, the son got involved because of his father, Saifullah Paracha, a textile businessman from Karachi. The FBI got wind of the father-son team as a result of the interrogation of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed whom the agency calls KSM. The prime Al Qaeda figure was captured by Pakistani and American agents in March this year.

He told his captors that there was a web of Al Qaeda “sleeper agents” he had set up inside America. He had deliberately recruited operatives who had easy entry to US territory as green card holders (like Paracha) or even US citizens. KSM said one element of his sleeper network involved using Paracha’s father’s import-export firm as a cover for smuggling explosives into the US, according to an FBI report obtained by the US newsmagazine. The report says that shortly after KSM started talking, US investigators rounded up some of the suspects identified by the Al Qaeda chief, including Paracha – who was hanging out at his father’s company office in Manhattan’s garment district – and Iyman Faris, a Columbus, Ohio, truck driver whom KSM had assigned to carry our surveillance of the Brooklyn Bridge and then to buy acetylene torches that could be used to cut its suspension cables.

Paracha is being held as a “material witness”, and has been charged with providing support to Al Qaeda, including conspiring with two unidentified Al Qaeda operatives to acquire identity papers that would help one of the terror suspects enter the US. According to a government source and Paracha’s lawyer, the suspect whom Paracha is accused of helping with the identity papers is Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident now in custody overseas, whose family owned gas stations in Maryland.

According to FBI documents, KSM told interrogators that he and Khan had planned to simultaneously blow up the underground storage tanks of several gas stations. Though his lawyer says Paracha is not a terrorist and was unaware of any planned attacks, he concedes that Paracha did phone US immigration authorities on Khan’s behalf –a call that prosecutors allege was part of an attempt to keep Khan’s US immigration status regular so he could get back into the country.

Paracha’s father has not been heard from since his arrest in Pakistan last month. His wife, Farhat Paracha insists that neither her husband nor her son is involved in terrorism.

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