US and Pakistani officials were last night questioning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected architect of the September 11 attacks and al-Qaida kingpin arrested in a dramatic swoop over the weekend. His arrest was hailed by officials in Washington as a significant blow to Osama bin Laden’s network. “That’s fantastic,” George Bush told his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, when she passed on the news. Yesterday the Khan family who live at the two-storey grey house at 18a Nisar Road, where officials say they found Mohammed, gave a very different account of the raid. Dr Abdul Quddus Khan, 78, a retired microbiologist who runs a respected cardiology institute lives at the house with his wife Mahlaqa, their son Ahmed, 42, his wife and their two young children. Dr Khan and his wife were at a wedding in Lahore on Friday. At 3am on Saturday a squad of around 20 armed police and intelligence officers kicked open the door and burst into the house. They dragged away Ahmed and held his wife and children at gunpoint for an hour as they ransacked the house, according to Ahmed’s sister Qudsia. At no point, the family say, was Mohammed or any other man in the house. The agents did not even ask about them. “The only people in the house were my brother, his wife and their kids,” Qudsia said. “I have absolutely no idea why the police came here.” Officials at Pakistan’s interior ministry insist they found Mohammed and one other Arab al-Qaida suspect in the house and arrested them at the same time as Ahmed was detained. Yet the family and their supporters challenge the official account and say Mohammed must have been arrested in another raid at another time. Full Story
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