US captures senior al-Qa'ida commander

In what may be a major breakthrough, the Pentagon said that US forces had captured Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi-born al-Qa'ida commander high on the most-wanted list of terrorists. He has been transferred to the top security prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A Pentagon spokesman said Al-Iraqi was transferred to Defence Department custody this week from the Central Intelligence Agency, but he refused to say where, when and how he was seized. But a CIA official described him as a "veteran jihadist" whose capture ­ believed to be part of an operation stretching across several countries late last year ­ was a "significant victory" in the fight against terror.

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Last night, it was reported that Al-Iraqi was thought to have devised the July 7 suicide bombings in London.

He is considered to be one of Osama bin Laden's top global deputies, " personally chosen by Bin Laden to monitor al-Qa'ida operations in Iraq." Originally from Mosul, in northern Iraq, Al-Iraqi once served in Saddam Hussein's army, and has acted as a liaison between the terror group inside Iraq and other parts of the organisation. He is said to have helped cement a 2005 recon-ciliation between Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qa'ida commander in Iraq.

He becomes the 15th "high-value detainee" taken to Guantanamo Bay after being held by the CIA in secret prisons abroad. Al-Iraqi is suspected of organising cross-border attacks from Pakistan on US forces in Afghanistan, and of leading at least one attempt to assassinate Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf.

The Pentagon spokesman said the captured terrorist was trying to return to his native country to manage al-Qa'ida's affairs there and possibly co-ordinate operations outside Iraq against Western targets.

In a note to agency employees, the CIA director general, Michael Hayden, claimed the seizure was "a significant victory" and that the CIA had played "a key role in efforts to locate him".

Meanwhile, police in Saudi Arabia have arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom were being trained abroad as pilots to fly aircraft in attacks on oil fields, the Interior Ministry said in Riyadh. A statement said the detainees planned to carry out suicide attacks against "public figures, oil facilities, refineries ... and military zones" ­ some of them outside the kingdom. They had reached "an advanced stage of readiness" and only the timing of the attacks was in doubt.

"They had the personnel, the money, the arms," a senior ministry official said. "Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete, except for setting the zero hour for the attacks."