50 Nations Hold 360 Terror Suspects
NewsMax.com Wires
Thursday, Nov. 22, 2001
WASHINGTON -- Foreign security services in 50 countries have arrested and detained about 360 suspects with alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network or other violent terrorist groups, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The suspects were rounded up at the CIA's request. The growing number of foreign detentions shows the degree of cooperation other nations are quietly providing to the U.S. effort to crush al-Qaeda, the newspaper said.
"Intelligence may be more important down the road," a White House official said, "when we can't bomb or send in the [U.S.] Special Forces and have to operate covertly to root out" the terrorists.
Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, intelligence-sharing and cooperation among foreign services worldwide have flourished, several sources said.
Of the 360 suspects arrested or detained, there were more than 100 in Europe, more than 100 in the Near East, 30 in Latin America and 20 in Africa. Officials said it is not clear whether those arrests disrupted any terrorist attacks.
In addition to those arrests, the FBI has helped produced a separate, unknown number of arrests. Dozens of countries have also stepped up their counterterrorism programs and have arrested on their own many more suspects, possibly in the hundreds, The Post reported.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
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