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| Iran | |||
| More on Binny and Ayman being in Iran | |||
| 2003-12-27 | |||
| Edited from a longer Financial Times story. In one recent account, a man with links to Iran’s intelligence services and hard-line Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC) has told the Financial Times that he saw the al-Qaeda leader in Iran two months ago. He saw him arrive at an RGC guest house close to the small town of Najmabad, west of Tehran, on 23 October. That fits with where Saif al-Adel and Junior are said to be hiding out. Maybe Binny’s "in custody" too ... The al-Qaeda leader, accompanied by Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy, was being driven by RGC officers when they arrived at the guest house, a 90-minute drive from Tehran.
Unfortunately, they were all just cannon fodder with nary a trace of Binny and Ayman.
The latter of which seems to have a different translation in Farsi than it does to the rest of us.
Lies! All lies! The vehemence of the Iranian denial is a reflection of how seriously the country - which George W. Bush, US president, defined as a part of an "axis of evil" - views any accusation that could make it a target of US action. Officials within the reformist government of President Mohamed Khatami also deny that Mr bin Laden has ever been in Iran. Would they know if he had? Mr Khatami’s strong suspicion of al-Qaeda’s Sunni fundamentalism has fed fears that Iran could itself become a target for the Saudi terrorist leader’s organisation. Unless of course he or his boss Khamenei is working with Binny, in which case it’s a great false trail, a la Sammy’s insistence that he would never team up with al-Qaeda or al-Jubeir’s insistence that Binny just hates the royals and would never cash checks from them. The man who reported the Najmabad sighting said he did not think the government knew about the alleged visit, and added that rogue hardliners in the Revolutionary Guard may have organised it independently. Always nice to have plausible deniability, those rogues ... But a senior Iranian security official said: "There have been so many similarly false stories that said bin Laden has been in Tabriz or Qazvin, but they were rumours. People tantalised by the $25m [offered by the US as a reward] have created these myths." Lies! All lies! But western intelligence officials are not so sure. One said the main focus of the search remained the Pakistani-Afghan border region but "it is not out of the question that he is in Iran, as we know he has been able to move around". That fits with Mansoor Ijaz’s account of the situation. If he is still alive and has been in Iran this whole time, it’s certainly in his interest to keep the hunt going along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The description of the clothes he was wearing here suggests at the very least that he was in Pakland at one point, which jives with stories of him going to have tea with Fazlur Rehman in Peshawar after Tora Bora. | |||
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 But it has denied that any senior al-Qaeda figures are among those being detained meaning, of course, they're free to move about and do their business? |
| Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds) 2003-12-27 1:24:13 AM |
| #2 I buried Pauul! |
| Posted by: Lucky 2003-12-27 1:06:38 AM |
| #1 Who the hell do the iranians think they are, the french? This has some very, very bad implications in regards to Special Weapons. I hope our J-3 is working with the Israelis on taking their enrichment plants out. Some of their scientists might need to develop lead poisoning, too. And this pipe dream about sunnis not conspiring with shiites not conspiring with wahhabists should finally be put to rest. |
| Posted by: 4thInfVet 2003-12-27 1:03:30 AM |