from detention so they can rebuild the terrorist organization on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, The Times of London reported last Friday.
Citing Pakistani and Middle Eastern officials speaking anonymously, The Times said Iranian authorities were giving covert support to the Islamist militants as they fight NATO troops.
“In many cases they are being facilitated by Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” The Times quoted a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying.
The Times said those released include Saif al-Adel, a high-ranking Egyptian Al-Qaeda member on the FBI’s most wanted list for alleged involvement in the deadly 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
They also include Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti accused of being Al-Qaeda’s official spokesman at the time of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and Abu Khayr al-Masri, a key aide to Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
Three members of the family of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were also among those freed, the officials were quoted by The Times as saying.
There was no confirmation of the story from other sources. While The Times was once one of the world’s great newspapers, since it has been bought by the Rupert Murdoch press empire, its international coverage has declined and many of its stories about Iran have been highly imaginative.
Several Al-Qaeda leaders fled to Iran when US troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iran has kept them under house arrest. Two young members of the Bin Laden family were allowed to leave Iran several months ago and reported about two dozen family members living in a compound there.
The Times quoted Pakistani officials as saying Al-Adel had been named Al-Qaeda’s chief of operations for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A Kuwaiti newspaper reported in November that a number of leading Al-Qaeda members, including Abu Ghaith, had moved from Iran to Yemen.
