The day Sunday Mercury tracked down Al Qaeda supergrass

Feb 20 2011 by Armadeep Bassey, Sunday Mercury

THIS is the world exclusive picture that set American investigators on the trail of the man who would become Al Qaeda’s first supergrass.

Mohammed Junaid Babar was caught on camera by a Sunday Mercury photographer in Pakistan just weeks after the 9/11 attacks.

Looking studious in his metal-rimmed glasses, the native New Yorker casually handed out anti-American leaflets at a highly-charged Islamic extremist rally in Lahore.

Flanked by British-born Taliban supporters, he shouted out slogans praising the World Trade Center atrocity and called for the death of American soldiers.

Little did his jihadi comrades realise that the tubby college drop-out would go on to betray them – and ensure they served jail sentences totalling hundreds of years.

Junaid Babar’s astonishing testimony meant he himself served just five years behind bars before being controversially released.

The man who confessed to training the London Tube bombers now walks free after cutting a deal with US prosecutors.

In a US court last week it emerged that investigators first became aware of Babar’s existence after he gave interviews and was photographed by the media in Pakistan.

And it was the Sunday Mercury who first caught up with Babar after I tracked him down to a secret hideout in Lahore, Pakistan, in November 2001.

The former parking attendant was staying with Midland Islamic firebrand Hassan Butt, who had set up a Pakistan base for British Muslims wanting to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I spent three days with the group, which also included several British Muslims, who claimed they had come to train at special camps – and were ready to die for their religion.