THIS is the first photograph of the man arrested on suspicion of masterminding the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s operations chief and No 3 in Osama bin Laden’s chain of command, was held in Pakistan on Saturday. Now American and Pakistani intelligence agents believe that they are “one step away” from capturing bin Laden himself.

Mohammed was caught in a pre-dawn raid along with the Islamic activist Ahmed Qadoos and another man at a house in Rawalpindi owned by Qadoos’s father. “He was caught sleeping and there was no resistance,” a Pakistani security official said.

Mohammed, who narrowly avoided arrest in another raid in Quetta last week, was said to have been plotting more strikes against American targets. Plans were said to include getting suicide terrorists to hijack oil tankers and drive them into power plants and destroying suspension bridges.

“This is a huge event,” Porter Goss, a former CIA agent and the Republican chairman of the Select House Intelligence Committee, said of Saturday’s arrests. “This is the equivalent of the liberation of Paris during the Second World War. It is going to lead to other very successful activities very shortly.”

And a senior Pakistani official said: “His (bin Laden’s) probability of being in a crowded city appears much greater. We may be one step away from bin Laden.”

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