Top terrorists 'hiding in Iran'

Mounting evidence gathered over several years has convinced US and foreign intelligence agencies that leading terror suspects have been living inside Iran.

Their existence in the Islamic republic poses a continuing problem for top Bush administration officials, who have warned Middle Eastern countries against providing shelter or other aid to suspected terrorists.

The evidence includes communications by a fugitive mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the capture of a Saudi militant who appeared in a video in which Osama bin Laden confirmed he ordered the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to US and foreign officials.

They spoke anonymously 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 September 11 planning during a dinner that was videotaped and aired across the world.

The capture was a coup for the Saudis, 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 US began military operations to rout al-Qaida and the Taliban from Afghanistan.

Al-Harbi is believed to have been paralysed from the waist down while fighting in the 1990s alongside Muslim extremists in Bosnia and Afghanistan. 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.

US and foreign intelligence agencies also have evidence stretching back to the late 1990s that indicates Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil remains in hiding in Iran. He is wanted as a planner of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans.

Al-Mughassil, who also goes by the name Abu Omran, has been charged by the US as a fugitive from charges of conspiracy to commit murder in the attacks and has a €4m bounty on his head.

US authorities have long alleged the Khobar Towers 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.

US 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 had refused to identify al-Qaida members it had 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 harbouring or helping suspected terrorists.

US intelligence has this week been checking some reports, still uncorroborated as of yesterday, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaida’s leader of the Iraqi uprising, may have fled to Iran, officials said.

On Wednesday, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned countries in the Middle East not to help al-Zarqawi.

“Were a neighbouring 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.

US and foreign officials said evidence gathered by intelligence agencies indicates the following figures are in Iran:

:: Saad bin Laden, the son of the al-Qaida leader whom US authorities have aggressively hunted since the September 11 attacks.

:: Saif al-Adel, an al-Qaida security chief wanted in connection with bombings of two US embassies in Africa.

:: Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the chief of information for al-Qaida and a frequently quoted spokesman for bin Laden.

US and foreign intelligence officials say they believe the three are under some form of house arrest or surveillance by Iranian authorities.