But internal Al-Qaeda documents captured from Osama Bin Laden’s hideout show that the highly touted intelligence operation was actually a ransom payment and a prisoner exchange. Seventeen of the documents were released last week by the US Army’s Combating Terrorism Center.
The documents confirm a report in the Iran Times last year that the Islamic Republic traded a dozen Al-Qaeda members, including Bin Laden’s relatives for the diplomat held 16 1/2 months in captivity.
Heshmatollah Attarzadeh-Niyaki, Iran’s commercial attachÈ in the Iranian consulate in Peshawar, was kidnaped November 13, 2008, when gunmen blocked his car on a bridge as he was being driven to work, riddled the car with bullets, killed the Pakistani policeman serving as his guard and driver, and whisked Attarzadeh away.
His kidnapping was variously attributed to the Pakistani Taliban, to Al-Qaeda, to local criminal gangs, or to militant Sunnis who hate Pakistani Shias and see Iran as supporting the Shias.
No one ever claimed to be holding Attarzadeh. Eventually, Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi told the media Attarzadeh had been freed “through a series of complicated intelligence operations,” in which Attarzadeh was tracked down in Pakistan and then rescued by Iranian intelligence agents who duped his captors.
But a Bin Laden letter says Attarzadeh was freed by Al-Qaeda in a trade deal and further accuses Iran of failing to fulfill all that it promised..
Communication between Bin Laden and Atiyya Abd al-Rahman, Al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan chief killed in 2010, reveal an antagonistic relationship between the terror group and the Islamic Republic. The communications also reveal how Iran and Al-Qaeda negotiated through a series of public statements, hints, nudges – and kidnappings – and how the terror group eventually felt shortchanged by Iran, which did not release all of the persons it had promised to free.
In a letter to Bin Laden dated June 11, 2009, Abd al-Rahman delivers the “good news” that the first group of six Al-Qaeda members has been released by Iran and that he expected more to be released soon.
Iran handed the Al-Qaeda members to “a brother from Baluchestan in Zahedan,” who then forwarded them to Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. The freed members made their way from the Baluchestan border into Quetta, Pakistan, and then onwards to the tribal areas of Pakistan where Al-Qaeda’s presence remains strong.
Abd al-Rahman said he believed Al-Qaeda’s pressure tactics cowed the Islamic Republic into releasing the group’s members.
“We think that our escalation efforts – which include political and media verbal threats that we sent to them, and the apprehension of their associate, the trade deputy in the consulate in Peshawar, and other things they saw from us – brought fear to them,” he wrote, attributing it as “one of the reasons for a speedy process on their behalf.”
Abd al-Rahman refers to Iran as “the criminals” and criticizes the regime’s opaque and unpredictable way of negotiating.
Iran “did not send any messages to us,” he writes, adding, “This is their mentality and method. They don’t want to show that they are negotiating with us or reacting to our pressure. They just do these acts to appear as if it is one-sided and as a matter of initiative on their behalf.”
The letters also reveal a cautious Bin Laden who is keen on avoiding arrest and suspicious that the United States or Iran might trace the released members of his family to his hideout.
He issues minutely detailed instructions for how his family members should be handled after their release: they should be taken to a highway tunnel between the Pakistani cities of Kohat and Peshawar, where an Al-Qaeda operative will receive and transport them onwards.
“The meeting must be precise in timing,” Bin Laden wrote. “And it will be inside the tunnel, and they will change cars inside the tunnel, so they will ride in the car with the brother whom they will meet instead of the car they were riding in, and the brothers who are going to drive the [second] car must be instructed on the strict adherence to the timings.”
Bin Laden was hiding in the garrison town of Abbottabad since at least 2005, but he was careful not to be detected. He instructed that his family be taken to Peshawar and kept there “until we arrange for them to come.”
He emphasized that before coming to him, the released members of his family get rid of literally all of their belongings, including anything “even as small as a needle, as there are eavesdropping chips that are developed to be so small that they can even be put inside a medical syringe,” adding, “Since the Iranians are not to be trusted, it is possible they will plant chips in some of the released people’s belongings.”
Bin Laden was also irritated that Iran failed to release his daughter, Fatima. He instructed his deputies to remind Iran that “she is connected to her husband, and it is not fair to separate women from their husbands, so she should be released with her husband.”
Iran’s version of the story of the abduction and release of Attarzadeh includes no reference to Al-Qaeda or a prisoner exchange. Intelligence Minister Moslehi said only that an armed group, which he did not name, had made certain demands, which he did not specify, for the release of Attarzadeh, but that Iran refused to respond.
Moslehi said Iran requested the assistance of Pakistan, but that it failed to do anything. Therefore, he said, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry decided to take matters in its own hands and proceeded to spring Attarzadeh with “complicated intelligence operations.”
The release of Attarzadeh roughly coincided with the arrest of Baluchi militant leader, Abdolmalek Rigi. Moslehi boasted that the release of Attarzadeh and the arrest of Rigi proved that Iran’s intelligence service outperforms those of the United States and Israel in the region. “We have a dominance over all other intelligence agencies active in the region,” he said.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast went one step further in his praise of Iran’s spies: “Mossad and the American intelligence services supported the group that abducted the Iranian diplomat. Mossad and American intelligence are stunned by the success of this operation.”
Outside Iran, newspapers in the Arab World and Pakistan, in their reporting about structural changes within Al-Qaeda, had mentioned Attarzadeh in passing and offered a few details of the swap that resulted in his release. The reports were not designed to embarrass Iran, but they indicated how Iran had tried to keep its public in the dark and make hay out of Attarzadeh’s release.
The recent Al-Qaeda documents confirm longstanding impressions in Western policy circles that there is little common ground between Iran and Al-Qaeda, although the precise details of their full relationship still remain unknown.
Al-Qaeda operatives and Bin Laden relatives used Iran as a passageway after 9/11 to escape from Afghanistan and evade American capture. Iran put dozens of high-level Al-Qaeda leaders and several of Bin Laden’s family members – including his sons Khalid and Omar, and his daughter Fatima with her husband – under strict house arrest.
Iran has since released most of these operatives, including all of Bin Laden’s family members, but several high-profile members of the terror group are still thought to be under Iranian custody.