KAR ACHI: The city police have claimed to have arrested an important member of Al Qaeda who is also wanted to US authorities for his links with the top leadership of the globally-declared militant organisation and for his alleged role in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Officials said that the suspect, Abdul Rahman Sindhi, was arrested after an encounter by the Rizvia police in the Gulbahar area where he had been living for the past few months. He hailed from Khairpur.

`The suspect had visited Afghanistan several times and held direct meetings with AlQaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri,` said SSP central Muqaddas Haider.

`He was injured in a drone attack in Afghanistan during one of his stays at militants` hideout.

The arrest was made in line with an intelligence report and further investigation would lead to more facts about his past activities.

He said a list released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the US in 2014 which carried names of Al Qaeda suspects mentioned Abdul Rahman as one of the wanted men. His bank accounts were frozen for his alleged links with militants.

However, the officials insisted that the investigations into the charges against the suspectwould be supervised by the area police unlike the past when highprofile cases were mainly handed over to the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD).

`We have registered an FIR against him under Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) other than charges under the Pakistan Penal Code,` said Inspector Idrees Alam Bangash, the SHO of Rizvia police station.

`So we would hold an investigation on our own, as we don`t have any directives from the high-ups to move the probe to the CTD or any other wing of the Sindh police.

He said during the course of investigations the suspect had disclosed his administrative positions in the past at different seminaries in Karachi.