Key al-Qaeda member escape from prison

The US military on Wednesday acknowledged that a top al Qaeda member escaped from a US detention facility in Afghanistan in the late summer.

Omar al-Faruq, one of the top aides of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, were among four captives ran away from the US prison in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in July, Jean Offutt, a US military spokeswoman at Fort Bliss, Texas, confirmed.

His escape has been kept in secret by the US military until Tuesday when military prosecutors said they were unable to bring al-Farouq to a trial of a prisoner abuse case in Afghanistan at Fort Bliss as a witness.

Offutt said the US military have beefed up security at Bagram since the escape, but gave no explanation for why the US military had been hiding the information for so long.

Omar al-Farouq, a Kuwaiti national, was believed to be a senior lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and a top global operative for al Qaeda.

In 1998, he was sent to Southeast Asia by Osama bin Laden to expand al Qaeda's operations in the region and has been implicated in several bomb attacks in Indonesia.

He was captured in Indonesia in 2002 and turned over to US authorities.

The Bagram prison detains hundreds of terror suspects since US forces overthrew the Taliban regime in late 2001, including several senior al Qaeda members.

Source: Xinhua