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| Axis of Evil |
| Ayatollahs Giving Up Al Qaeda |
| 2002-08-11 |
| Iran has quietly detained and expelled to Saudi Arabia 16 al Qaeda fighters who sought refuge in the country after fleeing Afghanistan, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, said today. Iranian authorities handed over the al Qaeda fugitives, all Saudis, knowing that whatever intelligence was obtained from them during interrogation in Saudi Arabia would be passed on to the United States for use in the war against terrorism, Saud said. The revelations of Iran's cooperation came in an interview with the foreign minister at his residence in Jiddah, where photos of President Bush adorn a wall in a study. It's tough being expendable cannon fodder when the Soddies have to kiss up to the Merkins. Dontcha hate it when that happens? Instead, Saud described cooperation, from Iran as well as Saudi Arabia. He said that even though Osama bin Laden, and some of its followers are Saudi, the Saudi government shares the U.S. desire to prosecute bin Laden and his network, declaring, "All the information we have on al Qaeda has been exchanged with the U.S." Financing, of course, has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. And we're only talking about al-Qaeda, not wahhabi subversion in general... The expulsion reversed long-standing Iranian claims that there were no al Qaeda operatives in its territory. The detainees are in Saudi Arabia, but officials declined to say if they are still incarcerated. If they were still incarcerated, the Soddies would have said so. I'd suspect they were either told to go, and sin no more, or at least not get caught at it, or were quietly disposed of. Probably it's a combination of the two, with some apparently having found jobs that make use of their hard skills, while any with no further utility got a long nap in the dirt... Iran has secretly turned over Arabs to governments that included Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, where the detainees have been interrogated, Arab officials said in recent interviews. The Arabs were detained after fleeing Afghanistan. The problem there isn't the ones they've handed over. That's mere good sense on their part. It's which ones they kept — and why. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |