Pakistani media reports that law enforcement in Pakistan has arrested Amin ul Haq, a close aide of Al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden and a UN-designated terrorist, in Punjab province.
According to Geo News, Amin ul Haq was arrested during an intelligence-based operation by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Punjab in Gujrat district on Friday and taken into custody.
The news outlet cited Pakistani counter-terrorism official Usman Akram Gonadal, who said that Amin ul Haq had been associated with bin Laden since 1996, was among al-Qaeda’s top fighters, and was involved in several terrorist attacks.
“Haq — responsible for coordinating security for the deceased Al-Qaeda chief — has also been designated as a terrorist by the United Nations,” The CTD official said.
“He was seen in Afghanistan in 2021. He also has Pakistan’s ID Card, on which Lahore and Haripur’s addresses have been added,” the official added.
According to the UN Security Council, Amin Muhammad ul Haq was born in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province in 1960 and was designated as a terrorist in January 2001.
Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian born and the founder and first leader of al-Qaeda, was killed in 2011 during a U.S. raid on his hideout in Abbottabad, a city in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
He and his organization were responsible for many terrorist attacks, including the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York, which killed nearly 3,000 people. This led the U.S. and NATO forces to go to Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban government after it refused to surrender Bin Laden.
Nearly three years after the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power, there is a growing consensus that the country is once again becoming a hotbed of terrorist activity. The resurgence is already impacting the region, though it has not yet reached the West.
In a report last year, the UN Security Council disclosed that Al-Qaeda is actively working to enhance its operational capabilities in Afghanistan, with 30 to 60 senior figures positioned in Kabul, Kandahar, and Kunar provinces.
The report noted that Al-Qaeda uses Afghanistan as an ideological and logistical hub to recruit new fighters and “covertly rebuild its external operations capability.”
According to the UN, Al-Qaeda operates training camps in 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and runs five madrassas, or religious schools, in Laghman, Kunar, Nangarhar, Nuristan, and Parwan provinces.
