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Iran refuses US al-Qaeda access BBC 8.13.2003 Iran has no intention of allowing United States officials to interrogate the al-Qaeda suspects it has arrested, the country's president has said. US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on Tuesday that Washington wanted to interrogate senior al-Qaeda members being held in Iran. But Tehran has refused to identify which al-Qaeda members it has caught and has already ruled out handing them over to the US. Saad Bin Laden, son of the Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, is thought to be one of the men being held by the Iranians.

Iran refuses to share al-Qaeda data with US October 29 2003 at 12:33PM Tehran - Iran said on Wednesday it would not share intelligence with the United States about al-Qaeda members held in Iran despite repeated requests from the American government for it to do so. "We don't have any relations with American security services so there is no reason to do anything on this issue," government spokesperson Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told a weekly news conference. US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on Tuesday that his government was prepared to resume limited contacts with the Iranian government but that...

Oct. 28, 2003 Iran rejects U.S. demand to extradite al-Qaida operatives By ASSOCIATED PRESS TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iran rejected a U.S. demand to hand over senior al-Qaida operatives in its custody, Tuesday, saying the terror suspects would stand trial in Iranian courts, state-run radio reported. A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that senior al-Qaida operatives held by Iran should be turned over to their countries of origin or to the United States for interrogation and trial. "Al-Qaida operatives currently in (our) custody have committed crimes in Iran," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted by...

Tehran, Iran-AP -- Iran is rejecting a U-S demand to hand over suspected senior al-Qaida operatives in its custody. A foreign ministry spokesman says the terror suspects have committed crimes in Iran -- and will therefore be tried in Iranian courts and punished on the basis of the laws of the country. Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted yesterday that the suspects be turned over to their countries of origin or to the United States for interrogation and trial. The Iranian spokesman says Iran has a number of al-Qaida operatives in custody, but would not say how many or...

IRAN is preparing to strike a deal with America to hand over Osama bin Laden’s two top acolytes in return for its removal from US President George Bush’s "axis of evil". According to European diplomats involved in talks with the Iranians about the country’s development of nuclear technology, its government sees the dozen senior members of al-Qaeda and 50 fighters living there as a way to win concessions from the US. Iran wants the Americans to accept it can build nuclear power stations and for the US to clamp down on a rebel movement, Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which is seeking to overthrow...

TEHRAN, Oct 26, 2003 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Iran has provided the United Nations with the names of 225 suspected al-Qaida members who had already been extradited to their countries of origin, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Sunday. The move is in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1455, said Hamid-Reza Asefi. Meanwhile, Iran would not disclose the names of suspected top al-Qaida members detained by Tehran, he said, noting that the list provided to the United Nations only covered those who had been already extradited by the Islamic republic. Iran has also informed the United Nations of the...

FREE-IRAN News at http://www.activistchat.com Al Qaeda's New Base From the November 3, 2003 issue: Osama bin Laden's men are operating in Eastern Iran. What are we doing about it? by Jeffrey Bell 11/03/2003, Volume 009, Issue 08 AT A TIME when even nuances of Iraq reconstruction policy become flashpoints for bureaucratic infighting, causing competing leaks to spring from almost every precinct of the administration's foreign policy apparatus, the most consequential policy struggle of all is playing out in virtual silence. That is the debate over what to do about the fact that, for the first time since the fall of...

WASHINGTON - A handful of senior al-Qaida operatives who fled to Iran after the Afghan war may have developed a working relationship with a secretive military unit linked to Iran's religious hard-liners, American counterterrorism officials say. The U.S. government isn't certain of the extent of the contacts with the Iranian unit, called the Qods Force, say the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The operatives include some of the most senior members of al-Qaida who haven't been captured or killed by the United States and its allies. Their presence in Iran, probably starting in late 2001 or early 2002,...

Osama bin Laden's men are operating in Eastern Iran. What are we doing about it? AT A TIME when even nuances of Iraq reconstruction policy become flashpoints for bureaucratic infighting, causing competing leaks to spring from almost every precinct of the administration's foreign policy apparatus, the most consequential policy struggle of all is playing out in virtual silence. That is the debate over what to do about the fact that, for the first time since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, major elements of al Qaeda seem to have acquired a new home. The address is eastern...

KHAMENEH'I RESISTS EXTRADITING OF AL-QA’EDA OFFICIALS TEHRAN 29 June (IPS) Iranian President Mohammad Khatami is locked in serious, if not vital, discussion with Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic over the extradition of some senior members of the al-Qa’eda organisation to their respective countries, Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to well informed sources. Iranian official admitted the arrest of at least five hundred al-Qa’eda "terrorists", but said they don’t know if any senior member of the network like the Egyptian Dr. Eyman al Zawaheri, Osama Ben Laden’s right hand man, his son, Sa’d or his spokesman,...

Al-Qaeda Number Two and Spokesman are in Iran June 27, 2003 AFP Yahoo News DUBAI -- Ayman al-Zawahiri, right-hand man of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, and Suleiman Abu Ghaith, spokesman of the terror group, are among al-Qaeda members detained in Iran, Al-Arabiya news channel revealed. Zawahiri, Abu Ghaith and one of bin Laden's sons are among a group of aides of the al-Qaeda chief held in Iran, the Dubai-based satellite television said, quoting "Western diplomatic sources." Al-Arabiya, which did not name bin Laden's son, said the detainees included Saudis, Kuwaitis, Jordanians and Iraqi Kurds

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia -- Iran has deported many al Qaeda suspects but will not extradite any to the United States despite requests to do so, President Mohammad Khatami said Friday at a summit of Islamic nations. The Bush administration has urged Iran to hand over several alleged senior members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network. American officials believe Tehran has the suspects in custody after they fled to Iran from neighboring Afghanistan when a U.S.-led coalition ousted the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001.

Oct. 14 — The elite Iranian force believed to be protecting Saad bin Laden and two dozen al Qaeda leaders is one of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ five branches, and has been given the mission of “exporting the Islamic revolution” by training, arming and collaborating with foreign terrorist groups — even those who do not share Iran’s fundamentalist Shiite brand of Islam. THE JERUSALEM Force, also known as the Qods Force, is highly trained and well-funded. It has provided instruction to more than three dozen Shiite and Sunni “foreign Islamic militant groups in paramilitary, guerrilla and terrorism” tactics, according...

U.S. and Kurdish security officials tell Newsweek that roughly 300 militants of a Qaeda-linked Kurdish group, Ansar Al-Islam, are holed up in small Iranian towns along the border with Iraq. The group seems to be recruiting new members in Baramawa, a Kurdish refugee camp inside Iran, reports Special Correspondent Babak Dehghanpisheh in the October 13 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 6). (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20031005/NYSU003 ) For 18 months Ansar had waged a fratricidal jihad against its secular Kurdish neighbors instead of helping them fight Saddam Hussein. After the U.S. assault on its enclave last March, the group seemed to...

Iran claims it has foiled al-Qaeda strike plans PARISA HAFEZI IRAN has foiled a number of attacks which al-Qaeda had been planning to carry out on its soil, a senior government official has claimed. "Their [al-Qaeda’s] plans for a wide range of terrorist acts inside Iran were neutralised by our intelligence organisations," the Iranian news agency, IRNA, quoted Hassan Rohani, the secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council, as saying. Mr Rohani gave no details of the planned attacks or whether any al-Qaeda members linked to them were arrested. Although a staunch political enemy of Washington, Iran condemned the...

The entire nation breathed a collective sigh of relief yesterday when it was announced by the White House, the Pentagon, the New York City mayor's office and spokesmen for the power industry that the outage was not the result of a terrorist attack. The fact that everyone was falling over themselves to declare this speaks volumes about the continuing wall of worry about terrorism in this country since 9-11. New York in particular has experienced several big blackouts in the past few decades. Did anyone ever suggest that any of those episodes may have been terrorism? Of course not. No...

<p>TEHRAN &#8212; Iran declared yesterday that it will not allow the United States to interrogate senior al Qaeda operatives in Iranian custody.</p> <p>"No," was President Mohammed Khatami's reply when reporters asked if Iran would allow U.S. investigators access.</p> <p>Earlier this week, an official at the Saudi Embassy here, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said 10 to 15 al Qaeda suspects had been detained in Iran, among them Saad bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, widely regarded as the architect of attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.</p>

Iran is using the senior members of the al-Qaida network it has detained as a bargaining chip in its war of nerves with the US, and will only allow their extradition in return for substantial concessions, sources in the political establishment said yesterday. "Iran holds the golden key on the al-Qaida issue, and the US knows it," a source familiar with the senior leadership told the Guardian. "They need us." Iranian officials privately acknowledge that Tehran is holding important members of the network - thought to include Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian who is believed to be the head of al-Qaida's...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday it would not hand over any detained members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to Washington and denied trying to strike a prisoner exchange deal with the United States. Iran publicly acknowledged for the first time last month that it was holding some senior al Qaeda figures and said it planned to extradite some of them to "friendly countries." On Saturday the New York Times quoted a U.S. official as saying Washington had approached Tehran with a request to hand over al Qaeda men in Iranian custody, including Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday it would not hand over any detained members of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network to Washington and denied trying to strike a prisoner exchange deal with the United States.   Iran publicly acknowledged for the first time last month that it was holding some senior al Qaeda figures and said it planned to extradite some of them to "friendly countries." On Saturday the New York Times quoted a U.S. official as saying Washington had approached Tehran with a request to hand over al Qaeda men in Iranian custody,...