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How long can we allow Iran to be a Terrorist's Haven intelligence and foreign
allies have growing evidence that wanted terrorists have been
residing in Iran despite repeated American warnings to Tehran not to
harbor them. The evidence, which stretches over several years,
includes communications by a fugitive mastermind of the 1996 Khobar
Towers bombing and the capture of a Saudi militant who appeared in a
video in which Osama bin Laden confirmed he ordered the Sept. 11
attacks, according to U.S. and foreign officials.  Fires will envelop the Mullah regime Iran soon, and bring an end to Iran as a haven for terrorists. U.S. and foreign intelligence
agencies also have evidence stretching back to the late 1990s that
indicates Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil remains hiding in Iran. He is
wanted as one of the masterminds of the Khobar Towers bombing in
Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. Al-Mughassil, who also goes by
the alias Abu Omran, has been charged as a fugitive by the United
States with conspiracy to commit murder in the attacks and has a $5
million bounty on his head.
World Crisis_____________________ They
spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the evidence remains
classified. Saudi intelligence officers tracked and apprehended
Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi last year in eastern Iran,
officials said. The arrest came nearly three years after the cleric
appeared with bin Laden and discussed details of the Sept. 11
planning during a dinner that was videotaped and aired across the
world. The capture was a coup for Saudi Arabia, which spent months
tracking him and setting up the intelligence operation that led to
his being taken into custody in exchange for eventual amnesty. The
officials said interrogations of al-Harbi, who is now in Saudi
Arabia, have yielded confirmation of many al-Qaida tactics, including
how members crossed into Iran after the U.S. began military
operations to rout al-Qaida and the Taliban from Afghanistan. Al-
Harbi is believed to have been paralyzed from the waist down while
fighting in the 1990s alongside Muslim extremists in Bosnia and
Afghanistan, and he surprised intelligence officials when he appeared
in the December 2001 video with bin Laden. "Everybody praises what
you did," al-Harbi said on the tape. U.S. and foreign intelligence
agencies also have evidence stretching back to the late 1990s that
indicates Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil remains hiding in Iran. He is
wanted as one of the masterminds of the Khobar Towers bombing in
Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. Al-Mughassil, who also goes by
the alias Abu Omran, has been charged as a fugitive by the United
States with conspiracy to commit murder in the attacks and has a $5
million bounty on his head. U.S. authorities have long alleged the
1996 bombing was carried out by a Saudi wing of the militant group
Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran and Syria. Intelligence
agencies gathered evidence, including a specific phone number, as
early as 1997 indicating al-Mughassil was living in Iran, and have
other information indicating his whereabouts. U.S. officials have
not publicly discussed the Saudi capture of al-Harbi or their
evidence on al-Mughassil's whereabouts, but have increasingly raised
questions about Iran's efforts to turn over other suspected
terrorists believed to be under some form of loose house arrest.
Nicholas Burns, State Department undersecretary for political
affairs, told Congress last month that Iran has refused to identify
al-Qaida members it has in custody. "Iran continues to hold senior al-
Qaida leaders who are wanted for murdering Americans and others in
the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and for plotting to kill
countless others," Burns said. Top administration officials have
repeatedly warned Iran against harboring or assisting suspected
terrorists. U.S. intelligence this week has been checking some
reports, still uncorroborated as of Friday, that Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader of the Iraqi insurgency, may have dipped
into Iran, officials said. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld warned countries in the Middle East not to help al-
Zarqawi. "Were a neighboring country to take him in and provide
medical assistance or haven for him, they, obviously, would be
associating themselves with a major linkage in the al-Qaida network
and a person who has a great deal of blood on his hands," Rumsfeld
said.
The U.S. and foreign officials said evidence gathered by intelligence
agencies indicates the following figures are somewhere in Iran: •
Saad bin Laden, the son of the al-Qaida leader whom U.S. authorities
have aggressively hunted since the Sept. 11 attacks.
• Saif al-
Adel, an al-Qaida security chief wanted in connection with the deadly
1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
• Suleiman Abu Ghaith,
the chief of information for al-Qaida and a frequently quoted
spokesman for bin Laden. U.S. and foreign intelligence officials
say they believe those three are under some form of house arrest or
surveillance by Iranian authorities. Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East
analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the conditions
that some of suspected terrorists are living under are unclear.
Katzman said it's possible they are being held in guarded villas and
he doubts any detention is uncomfortable. "I think that Iran sees
these guys as something of an insurance policy," he said. "It's
leverage." Rasool Nafisi, a Middle East analyst who studies
conservative groups in Iran and travels there frequently for
research, said Iran has returned some lower-rank operatives to their
home countries but probably is keeping higher-ranking operatives as a
bartering chip. "Remember, Islamic tradition is very much based on
haggling," Nafisi said. "Everything is negotiable, and you haggle for
everything. If I were the Iranian government, I'd be very happy to
have them and to use them in future negotiations with the United
States." Story Credits: Katherine Shrader and John Solomon writing for the
Associated Press
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