ISLAMABAD - Pakistani security forces have arrested a British Muslim believed to be wanted in connection with the July 7 London bombings, Pakistani intelligence sources said on Wednesday, but a minister denied he had been detained.
Several intelligence sources, who asked not to be identified, said Haroon Rashid Aswad had been picked up earlier this week during a crackdown on militants in Pakistan which netted more than 200 suspects.
"We have arrested Haroon Rashid from the house of Qari Fateh Mohammad from Sargodha three days ago... We strongly believe he has links with bombers," one security official told Reuters.
An official said the qari, an honorific title for someone who recites the Koran, had been detained at madrasa Qasim ul-Aloom on the outskirts of Sargodha, 150 km (90 miles) south of Islamabad.
Officials said Aswad had been taken from Sargodha and was being held in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.
Other intelligence sources also stood by their comments on Aswad's arrest, despite a denial by Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.
"We have arrested nobody called Haroon Rashid," the minister told Reuters.
One of the intelligence sources said Aswad had been carrying a belt packed with explosives for a possible suicide attack, around one million rupees ($17,000) and a British passport.
Aswad appears to be the unnamed militant Reuters reported was captured on Monday and found with explosives and cash.
Various media, including Wednesday's Asian Wall Street Journal, have reported that a search was still on for Aswad after his name was passed to Pakistani intelligence by British investigators.
The newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying Aswad's name had come up in the investigation based on information from the cellphone of one of the London bombers.
It also said a man named Aswad Rashid Haroon figured in U.S. intelligence databases as having ties to the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
Speaking to BBC Radio, Pakistan's high commissioner (ambassador) to London, Maleeha Lodhi, declined to go into specifics when asked about the arrest, on the grounds that this could compromise the investigation.
"But certainly people are being questioned in Pakistan and we ourselves have renewed a crackdown on extremism."
Sweeping Crackdown
President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, ordered a new crackdown on militants after revelations that three of the four London bombers were British Muslims of Pakistani descent who visited Pakistan before the attacks.
Officials say the three had entered Pakistan last year via the southern city of Karachi and at least one of them visited Islamic schools, some of which are seen as militant breeding grounds.
Musharraf plans to address the nation at 8 p.m. (1500 GMT) on Thursday on the London bombings and the crackdown on militants.
On Tuesday security forces detained more than two dozen suspects in a series of raids linked to investigations into the bombings, which killed more than 50 people.
Nearly 200 other suspects have been detained in a broader crackdown on militants not directly related to the investigation into the bombings, officials said.
In raids on controversial Islamic religious schools, known as madrasas, and on private houses, police detained 60 students, clerics and other suspects belonging to banned militant organisations in Karachi in the past 24 hours, authorities said.
Another 40 were detained in the northwestern city of Peshawar, 42 in the southwestern city of Quetta and 30 in the central city of Multan and some other cities in Punjab province.
"These people have been under surveillance for some time for their links to extremist groups," said senior police officer Malik Mohammad Saad of the Peshawar arrests.
"It's an ongoing process," he said, but added that the raids were not linked to the London bombings.
An opposition grouping of six Islamist parties, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), complained that "dozens" of its workers had been detained around the country.
MMA parliamentary leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said they included Sajid Farooqi, head of its Faisalabad chapter. He said Mufti Abrar, personal secretary to MMA secretary-general Fazal-ur-Rehman, had been briefly detained in Islamabad.
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