Posted on 06/29/2003 11:37:20 AM PDT by ewing
Iran has arrested at least three leading members of Al Qaeda including both the son and top aide of Osama Bin Laden, according to an Arab satellite news channel.
Western diplomatic sources said Iranian security agents have arrested the Number 2 figure in Al Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri. Zawahiri is the head of a splinter faction of the Egyptian insurgency group Jihad and the leading aide of Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden.
The sources told the Dubai based Al Arabia satellite channel that Iran also arrested other leading members of Al Qaeda, Middle East Newsline reported. They included Suleiman Abu Gaith, spokesman for Al Qaeda as well as Saad Bin Laden, the son of the movements founder Osama Bin Laden.
The three Al Qaeda leaders were part of a group of 40 members arrested by Iran over the past few weeks, the sources said. The group is said to have included Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Kurds and Saudis.
The sources said that Iran is said to have ruled out the extradition of the Al Qaeda members to the United States. But Teheran was said to have raised that they would be sent to countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, both which have signed security cooperation accords with Terhan.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldtribune.com ...
If true, I'm not sure what the long range effect could be (or is supposed to be) but I'd love to hear speculation.
We Don’t Have Top Al-Qaeda Men: Iran
Arab News
TEHRAN, 29 June 2003 — An Iranian government spokesman yesterday rejected Arab media reports that Osama Bin Laden’s son was being held in Iran, the students’ news agency ISNA reported.
While denying the reports, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi said Iran would never disclose the results of security-related issues to the foreign media. The spokesman also denied media reports on detainment of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, said to be the right hand man of the Al-Qaeda leader.
The Al-Arabiya satellite television network quoted unnamed Western diplomatic sources as saying Al-Zawahiri and Al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith were among several Al-Qaeda suspects Iran had arrested in recent months.
In recent weeks, there has been considerable speculation in Tehran that Al-Zawahiri, a medical doctor nicknamed the “Terror Doctor”, was among some 500 people which official sources said had illegally entered Iran from Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, according to diplomatic sources, Iran has been locked in highly secretive and complex extradition talks with Egypt and Kuwait over prisoners held here who are widely believed to be senior members of Al-Qaeda network.
According to the well-placed sources, Tehran could deal the biggest blow to the network since the United States-led war in Afghanistan by handing over some of Bin Laden’s closest aides. The sources said they have strong reason to believe that three top Al-Qaeda fugitives have been detained in Iran.
However...
We DO have agreements with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both of whom might be willing to either turn them over to us or (just as good) make them available to us for interrogation before they are tried under Saudi/Kuwaiti law.
My feeling is that if this is true, then there is probably some heavy back-channel dealing going on between the US and Iran, and the US and Saudi Arabia/Kuwait. The Iranians are probably shooting for some kind of economic benefit like the un-freezing of US-held Iranian assets. If all goes as planned Iran gives up the Quaeda to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia and that country (probably Saudi, because of the pasting they've been taking in the press over here) publicly extratdites them to the US for trial and eventual shooting.
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