WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- Pakistan's military spy agency, Inter-Service Intelligence, said Wednesday that the country's largest religious party wasn't involved with al Qaida.
Last week, an ISI video showed its agents arresting a senior al Qaida operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed from the home of a Jamaat-e-Islami leader.
Later, media reports said that three other suspects arrested earlier were also hiding with Jamaat supporters.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said last week that the arrests were "no coincidence" and urged the party to explain its position.
But at a briefing for Pakistani editors on Wednesday, the ISI changed its stance, saying that it had no evidence to suggest that the Jamaat was involved with al Qaida.
"Jamaat-e-Islami as a party has no connection whatsoever with international terrorist organizations including al Qaida," a senior ISI official told the editors.
"However, it is possible that some members of the Jamaat had links with some al Qaida activists," he added.
Mohammed, 37, who is considered to have planned the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, is now in U.S. custody.
The ISI video, shown at a rare briefing for foreign journalists, was rejected by Jamaat as fake and taken after Mohammed's arrest.
The journalists who saw the video also said that it did not show the face of the suspect and was unclear and shaky.
"We are being implicated with al Qaida to please the United States. No al Qaida suspect has ever been arrested from the home of a Jamaat leader," said Jamaat chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad.
The two briefings on al Qaida for Pakistani and foreign journalists followed scathing attacks on ISI in the Western and the Indian press, blaming ISI for still harboring al Qaida sympathizers under its wings.
Jamaat-e-Islami is South Asia's oldest Islamic party with hundreds of thousands of supporters across the subcontinent. It is also a major force in the Pakistani parliament and has thousands of sympathizers in various government departments, including the armed forces.
In the October elections, Jamaat played a key role in forming an 11-party alliance and taking advantage of strong anti-American feelings in the areas bordering Afghanistan. The religious alliance won almost one-fourth of the seats in the Pakistani parliament.
It is strongly campaigning against a possible U.S. attack on Iraq and also wants Washington to pull its troops from Afghanistan.
Besides defending Jamaat, ISI officials also rejected media speculation as incorrect that al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden has either already been arrested or will be arrested in hours.
But an ISI official admitted that media reports about bin Laden's imminent arrest emanated from the agency's briefing last week for foreign journalists. "We, however, do not know what we said to provoke such speculations," he added.
"Bin Laden is not on the Pakistani soil," said the official, but he said that if an international intelligence agency provides evidence of his presence in Pakistan, "we will not hesitate to react promptly."
He said the FBI was providing information to the Pakistani agencies for operations against al Qaida "because they have better equipment and database." The FBI, he said, also interrogates the suspects.
Earlier Wednesday, a Pakistani politician Agha Murtaza Pooya, told Iranian Radio that bin Laden was in custody but he did not know where he was being held.
Pooya said he heard of bin Laden's arrest from credible sources who had never given him wrong information before.
He said he believed news of the arrest was being held back to coincide with the start of military action against Iraq.
Both Pakistan and the United States have dismissed his claim as inaccurate.
The ISI official said that since Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan has received 4,025 requests from "friendly countries" for action against suspected terrorists. "We took action on 3,729 such requests while 296 requests are still pending."
The official said that so far the ISI had conducted 131 raids and arrested 446 foreign nationals. "Out of them, 382 have since been extradited while 56 were released as innocent after interrogation. Eight persons were still under various stages of interrogation," he said.
