Pakistan Arrests Embassy Bombings Suspect; timing odd?

Hayyat announced the arrest after midnight in Pakistan in an interview with Geo television, an unusually late hour considering the arrests were made Sunday and authorities had known but not revealed the man's identity for some days.

Pakistani leaders have rejected allegations they time the announcements of major terror arrests for maximum impact, though several other arrests have come on the eve of important Pakistan-U.S. summits. Al-Qaida suspect Ramzi Binalshibh was nabbed in Karachi on Sept. 11, 2002, the one year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Pakistan, which became a key ally of the United States in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in America, has so far arrested more than 500 al-Qaida suspects from different parts of the country.

They included al-Qaida No. 3 leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was arrested in March 2003 during a raid in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad. Almost all the foreign suspects, including Mohammed, were later handed over to the U.S. officials.

Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah, two other al-Qaida leaders, were also arrested in Pakistan.

Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and his right hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in the rugged tribal frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but there has been no hard evidence on their whereabouts.
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