An American-born al-Qaeda spokesman who is also the first US citizen to be charged with treason in more than half a century has been arrested by Pakistani security forces on the outskirts of Karachi.
Adam Gadahn, considered a key figure because of his success in recruiting English-speaking converts to jihad, was picked up on a tip-off indicating the extent of support by Pakistani intelligence in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taleban.
Gadahn was born in Oregon to parents of Jewish heritage and raised on a goat farm in southern California. He worshipped a form an obscure offshoot of heavy metal music known as “death metal” as a teenager and converted to radical Islam in his twenties. Now 31, he has been on the FBI’s mostwanted list since he started appearing in al-Qaeda propaganda videos as Abu Yahya Mujahideen Al-Adam in 2004.
Gadahn was arrested while being driven in a pick-up truck on Saturday night near where Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was detained last month, intelligence sources confirmed yesterday.
Baradar, the Afghan Taleban’s second-in-command, has been in Pakistani custody since his arrest. In another sign of growing co-operation between the US and Islamabad, American interrogators have been allowed to question him but US officials indicated that his arrest is not thought to be linked to Mr Gadahn’s.
Baradar is “not giving us any actionable intelligence,” a source told The New York Times.
The capture of Mr Gadahn, described as a member of al-Qaeda’s “media committee”, may reflect a broader offensive against the terror group by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Mr Gadahn is known in jihadist circles as Azzam al-Amriki (Azzam the American). He made his mark as a recruiter in a video entitled An Invitation to Islam.
Shortly after the video was endorsed by Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2006, a federal grand jury in California formally charged Mr Gadahn with treason. He has carved out a niche as one of al-Qaeda’s few American-born recruiters able to connect with potential converts in western culture. He once said: “If you die as an unbeliever in the battle against the Muslims, you’re going straight to Hell.”
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