ISLAMABAD, March 2 (AFP) – Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is described as the master terrorist who dreamed up the carnage of September 11. Fluent in four languages and highly intelligent, he was the big fish who was always one step ahead of his pursuers – until he was caught napping.

His capture while still asleep in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi is one of the biggest successes of the US-led war on terrorism so far.

He had eluded Pakistani and US intelligence agents for more than a year, dodging raids and moving from safe house to safe house in Pakistan’s crowded cities.

One of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted lieutenants, he has been wanted by the US for eight years. He was suspected of plotting in 1995 in Manila to blow up commercial airliners flying to the US from Southeast Asia, and was indicted in New York in 1996.

On the FBI’s list of 22 most wanted terrorists with a US$25-million bounty on his head, Mohammed had spent time studying mechanical engineering in the US before the September 11 attacks, Pakistani investigators said.

They say he fled the country shortly before the atrocities and headed to Afghanistan where he joined bin Laden.

His true nationality and age are unclear. The FBI says on its website that he was born in Kuwait, and has used identification documents listing his birthdate alternatively as March 1, 1964 and April 14, 1965.

But he is believed to be Pakistani by birth, his parents native to the tribal-dominated south-west province of Baluchistan.

He was carrying two passports when arrested, one of them Omani.

A Pakistani security dossier describes him as very intelligent, a meticulous planner and a daring person who knows how to forge links and find places to shelter.

Mohammed also played a key role in the financial affairs of the al-Qaeda network, funnelling cash to cells in different countries including Pakistan.

Some time after the defeat of al-Qaeda’s Taliban allies in Afghanistan by the US-led military campaign in late 2001, he followed hundreds of fellow al-Qaeda operatives into neighbouring Pakistan, where they were sheltered by sympathetic local militants.

Mohammed spent much of his time hiding in Pakistan’s largest city Karachi, a teeming port of 14 million on the shores of the Arabian Sea. Karachi has become a haven for al-Qaeda fugitives in hiding or waiting to be spirited out of the country.

Investigators believe Mohammad, bearded and balding in FBI website photos, was trying to rebuild the terror network.

“He should know the whole (al-Qaeda) chain downward and the whole chain upward,” a senior security official told AFP.

Shortly before the first anniversary of September 11, Mohammed and alleged co-planner Ramzi bin al-Shaiba gave an interview from a hideout in Karachi to a journalist from the Arab al-Jazeera television network.

The journalist was led to their apartment blindfolded, and was not allowed to record the interview. The pair described in detail how al-Qaeda planned and carried out the attacks on what they called “Holy Tuesday”.

Al-Jazeera called the two men the head of al-Qaeda’s military committee and the co-ordinator of the September 11 operation.

Joint teams of US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Pakistani intelligence agents, conducting a nationwide manhunt in Pakistan for fleeing al-Qaeda operatives, have been a hair’s breadth from capturing him in at least three known raids.

He escaped from an apartment in Karachi on the eve of the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Alleged co-planner bin al-Shaiba was captured in that raid.

Mohammed then escaped a raid early last week in the south-west city of Quetta. Investigators believe it was then that he fled to Rawalpindi, a crowded market city, home to the headquarters of Pakistan’s military, and took shelter in a home belonging to a member of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami party.

Mohammed is now in US custody. He was due to have been flown out of Pakistan at dawn yesterday to Afghanistan’s Bagram air base.