 [Al Ahram] U.S. investigators tracked Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, for about 10 years before he was detained in Jordan and brought by the FBI to New York City in the past few days, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation said.
An FBI agent and a New York police detective together spent more than a decade investigating Abu Ghaith, not only for his role as a spokesman for al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington but for activities they believed he was involved in before 2001, said one official.
On Friday, Abu Ghaith pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court to conspiring to kill Americans, becoming one of the highest-ranking al Qaeda figures to face trial in the United States for crimes connected to the Sept. 11 attacks.
He was captured on Feb. 28 and brought secretly to the United States on March 1, prosecutors said in court. Law enforcement sources say he was detained in Jordan by local authorities and the FBI after was believed to have been expelled from Turkey.
But it was in Iran where Abu Ghaith is believed to have spent most of the past decade, having taken refuge there following Sept. 11, 2001, with a group of other associates of bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011.
Current and former U.S. officials said that group, known to U.S. investigators as the al Qaeda "Management Council," was kept more or less under control by the Iranian government, which viewed it with suspicion. Along with Abu Ghaith, members of the group included Saif al Adel, one of al Qaeda's top military commanders, and Saad bin Laden, one of bin Laden's sons.
A former U.S. official said that in late 2002 and early 2003, CIA officers held secret discussions in Europe with Iranian officials regarding the possible expulsion to Saudi Arabia or another country of Abu Ghaith and fellow al Qaeda operatives in Iran.
At the time, the United States had information indicating the al Qaeda figures in Iran might be in contact with militants in Saudi Arabia who posed potential threats to Saudi interests.
But the secret discussions fell apart when Iran suggested that, in return for its expulsion of the al Qaeda operatives, the United States should crack down on the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq, an Iranian exile group that until recently was the target of U.S. and European sanctions for its alleged involvement in violence, the former official said.
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