The official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters the Briton, Abdul Jabbar, had also been in the process of setting up a branch for the Taliban in Britain. "He had some links to Faisal Shahzad but the nature of the ties are not clear," the official said, referring to the Pakistani-born US citizen who tried to set off a car bomb in New York's busy Times Square in May.
Shahzad was sentenced on Tuesday in a New York court to life in prison. The Pakistani intelligence official said Jabbar came to Pakistan in 2009 and received militant training in North Waziristan, a lawless ethnic Pashtun region on the Afghan border. Jabbar had earlier survived a drone strike on a militant training camp run by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a commander allied to the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban faction seen as one of the most effective forces battling Western troops in Afghanistan.
"He was eventually killed in a drone strike near Miranshah on September 8," the official said, referring to the main town of North Waziristan.
The United States has stepped up attacks by its pilotless drone aircraft over northwest Pakistan since late 2008. Most of the attacks have been in North Waziristan.
News of Jabbar's death came after an alleged al Qaeda plot to attack European targets put Pakistan's performance against militants under scrutiny again. European and US counter-terrorism officials have said that concerns about a group of about 100 German militants who had travelled between Germany and northwest Pakistan contributed to the latest security alert in Europe.
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