A top al-Qaeda commander linked to a string of international terror attacks has been captured trying to enter Iraq and is in US custody, the Pentagon said today.

Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi is perhaps the most important figure to be captured since 9/11 and his detention is a major blow to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. He is currently being held by the Americans in the High Value Detainee Programme at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Al-Iraqi was held by the CIA before being turned over to US military authorities, said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. He declined to comment on when and where al-Iraqi was captured or whether US forces were directly involved in the capture.

“At the time of his capture he was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage Al-Qaeda’s affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraqi against western targets,” he said.

“He was intercepted before he got there,” he said.

US officials said tonight they believed him to be the mastermind behind two attempts in 2002 to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. The Pakistani Interior Minister, Aftab Sherpao, said: “Pakistan welcomes the arrest,” adding that there was a $5 million bounty on al-Iraqi’s head.

More than anyone else it was Abd al-Hadi who rebuilt and restructured al-Qaeda following the flight of its leadership from the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Once secured in the tribal areas of Pakistan, he began the task of forging a firm alliance with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and bringing the jihad in Iraq under the al-Qaeda banner.

He ran terrorist training camps, planned future strategy with bin Laden and Aymann al-Zawahiri and directed operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Europe.

Compared to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the planner of the 9/11 atrocities who he will join in the High Value Detainee Programme in Guantanamo - Abd al-Hadi’s operations were less ambitious but usually more realisable.

There have been previous attempts to capture or kill him. In 2004 the Pakistani army mounted a major assault on a fortified compound in South Waziristan which was thought to be his base.

Mr Whitman said al-Iraqi “was one of Al-Qaeda’s highest ranking and senior operatives at the time of his detention”.

“He also in recent years was involved in plots to assassinate perceived opponents of al-Qaeda to include Pakistan President Musharraf as well as other officials,” he said.

A fact sheet released by the Pentagon said al-Iraqi believed that Al-Qaeda members in Iran “should be doing more with the fight, including supporting efforts in Iraq and causing problems within Iran.”

Abd al-Hadi was born in 1961 in the Kurdish city of Mosul, northern Iraq. He did national service in Saddam Hussein’s army, rising to the rank of major but left for Afghanistan in the mid-1980s to join the jihad against the Soviet Union.

Before September 11, 2001, he was a member of the al-Qaeda military committee that oversaw terrorist and guerrilla operations and paramilitary training, according to the Pentagon.

He also was a member of a ten-member group of advisors to Osama bin Laden, and was known and trusted by the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Pentagon said.

It said that at one point he was Zawahiri’s caretaker and that he interacted with top Al-Qaeda planners and decision makers.

More recently, he associated with leaders of other extremist groups allied with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Taleban, it said.

He worked “directly with the Taleban to determine responsibility and lines of communication between Taleban and al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, specifically with regard to the targeting of US forces,” Mr Whitman said

Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, declined to say when and where al-Iraqi was captured. The spokesman called him “a veteran jihadist" and said his capture is “a significant victory in the fight against terror - getting him off the street is good news.”

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