'Prime suspect' in Kolkata attack arrested

Police say Ansari was travelling on a passport issued by Pakistan

NEW DELHI, India -- The man named by Indian police as the prime suspect behind last month's attack on an American cultural center in city of Kolkata has been arrested in Dubai and extradited, officials in New Delhi say.

P.C. Sharma the director of India's federal police agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said Aftab Ansari -- also known as Farhan Malik -- was arrested the day after the attack as he was trying to board a flight from Dubai to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Sharma said Ansari was carrying a Pakistani passport at the time.

Indian police say Ansari, an Indian citizen based in Dubai, plotted the January 22 attack on the American Center in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta.

Five policemen were killed when motorcycle-riding gunmen opened fire on the building in an attack investigators say was timed to coincide with a shift change of security personnel.

Indian police have said they believe Ansari worked with Islamic militant groups, backed by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to plot the attack.

India has accused the ISI of supporting several extremist groups it blames for carrying out terrorist attacks on Indian territory.

Stand-off

Five policemen were killed in the attack on the American Center -- a complex which houses the U.S. consulate in the city

Following an attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi in December, that row has escalated to a full blown military stand-off with the two countries deploying about a million troops along their shared border.

Pakistan has denied any involvement in the Kolkata attack and rejected charges that it supports terrorist groups.

Apart from the Kolkata shootings, a statement from CBI investigators said Ansari is wanted for his involvement in "a series of anti-national, terrorist and heinous crimes."

These are thought to include the smuggling of arms and explosives into India from Pakistan and the kidnapping of rich businessmen.

Shortly after the Kolkata attack police said Ansari has contacted officials in the city from Dubai and claimed responsibility for the shootings.

They said Ansari had claimed the attack was in retaliation for the killing of Hafiz Khan, leader of the Pakistan-based militant group Harkat-ul Jehad-e-Islami, in a shootout with Indian police last October.

According to the CBI Ansari has close ties with Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-educated Pakistani militant believed by Pakistani police to be behind the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Sheikh was jailed by India in 1994 for involvement in the kidnapping of British and American tourists and was freed on December 31, 1999, to end the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight. Ansari, police said, was jailed during the same time period.

However, the CBI did not suggest that they believed Ansari was involved in or had any connection to Pearl's disappearance.