Zanzibar (Tanzania), July 31 (Reuters): The weeping mother of top al Qaida suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani who has been captured in Pakistan said yesterday her son was a harmless, religious boy who had gone abroad to study.

Ghailani is thought to be the most senior al Qaida operative caught in Pakistan since the arrest in March 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

“The day he left, he hugged me and said he was going for studies,” Bimkubwa Said Abdallah said in the Tanzanian Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar, which is overwhelmingly Muslim.

“He was a quiet boy and religious, so he is not capable of hurting people.

“He did not show any signs of being violent.”

Ghailani is accused by the US of being a key member of the al Qaida network, and had a $5 million bounty on his head for his role in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in east Africa that killed 224 people.