Posted on 02/18/2002 2:08:30 AM PST by Bad~Rodeo
TEHRAN 17 Feb. (IPS) The Iranian Foreign Ministry Sunday denied press reports of the arrest, in Iran, of Dr. Iman Al Zawaheri, the Al-Qa’eda’s second man, without insisting further.
The Persian daily "Hayat No" (New Life), owned by Hojjatoleslam Hadi Khameneh’i, the younger brother of the leader of the Islamic Republic who is in the opposed camp of his brother, reported Sunday that Mr. Al-Zawaheri, considered as Mr. Osama Ben Laden’s mentor and the brain behind the 11 September operations, has been detained in Iran.
According to the daily, considered as an informed and serious paper, the Egyptian doctor Al-Zawaheri was arrested several days ago and is held in Tehran’s Evin prison.
The paper did not disclose its sources or provide any other information and attempts by journalists, including Associated Press’s Afshin Valinezhad, to reach officials for comments proved fruitless.
The U.S. State Department included al-Zawahri, bin Laden and 20 other men on a "most wanted terrorist" list issued last year and offered rewards of up to dlrs 25 million for information leading to the arrest of terrorists.
Though Mr. Hamid Reza Asefi, the senior spokesman of Foreign Affairs Ministry denied the report, but considering the bizarreness of Iranian politics, observers told Iran Press Service that they would not be surprised if the information was confirmed in coming days.
They were referring to Iran’s sudden U-turn about the presence on its soil of the defeated Taleban and A’-Qa’eda members, as, after having adamantly rejected as "baseless" and "undocumented" all American claims that several high-ranking Taleban officials and members of the terrorist organisation were hiding in Iran, an unidentified "Source" confirmed on Thursday the arrest of 150 Taleban and Al-Qa’eda "infiltrators", some of them carrying Arab, African and European passports.
The sudden and unexpected admission came hours only after the Afghan-born Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the Bush Administration’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan, had disclosed that Washington had in fact passed "substantial" information and documents about both the presence of leading Al-Qa’eda and Taleban officials in Iran and Iranian meddling in Afghan interior affairs, aimed at destabilising the pro-West interim Prime Minister Hamed Karzai "directly to Iranian diplomats during multilateral talks on Afghanistan."
In a typical Iranian twisted way of presenting events when caught "red handed", the Iraqi-born Asefi immediately rejected Mr. Khalilzad’s statement while confirming, telling the official news agency IRNA that the information provided by the Americans could "not be used" as they were "a repetition, false, and inaccurate".
Iran's reported detention of Al-Qa’eda figures and indirect hints that elements from the Revolutionary Guards might be involved in providing arms and money to Afghan local commanders under orders of Esma’il Khan, the Iranian-backed Governor of Heart province comes amid signs that the Iranian government is trying to defuse tensions with Washington, suspected by the United States of being behind the 11 September attacks.
Also twisting, IRNA quoted Sunday General Khan as having denied reports of "Iranian military assistance to Afghanistan", while the American charges of such "assistances" are related to the Afghan warlord and not to the interim government of Mr. Karzai.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran has made no military help to Afghanistan", Mr. Khan has told the new Afghan weekly "Kabul", according to IRNA.
In his BBC interview, Mr. Khalilzad had said that elements of the Revolutionary Guards "Al-Qods" (Jerusalem) elite unit, controlled by the Iranian leader, were in Heart, providing arms, ammunitions and money to local commanders and remaining Taleban and Al-Qa’eda fighters to destabilise Mr. Karzai, "probably without the knowledge of President Khatami".
"We have friendly ties with the Islamic Republic and seek the best relations with all neighbours of Afghanistan", Mr. Khan told the weekly, as quoted by the Iranian official news agency.
In the interview, Khan also stressed that forces under his command had managed to establish "full security" along Heart province's borders with Iran and Turkmenistan", repeating earlier Iranian claims.
But in their latest declarations, Iranian officials, including the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence ministries acknowledged to the "difficulties" of securing Iran’s long borders with both Afghanistan and Pakistan, charging Islamabad with "helping" Afghan and Al-Qa’eda "terrorists infiltrating Iranian territory".
"Those arrested are nationals of Arab, African and European countries, while others carry French, British, Belgian, Spanish and Dutch passports", the Iranian "Source" had said, adding that they have travelled the 750-kilometer distance between the Pakistani city of Quetta and the Iranian border city of Mirjaveh in the south-eastern Sistan and Baloochestan province "without being stopped at all by Pakistan's security forces".
Mr. Khatami described as a "terrorist act" the deadly operations and Iranians, mostly young ones, organised instantaneous candle light vigils in sympathy with the victims of the attacks, raising hopes that the tragedy would help improving Tehran-Washington ties that were broken after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
But Mr. Khameneh'i not only opposed any co-operation with the United States in its war against international terrorism, but also in a series of speeches, harshly criticised US military intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan, aimed at hunting Mr. Ben Laden and ending the ruthless rule of the orthodox Islamists known as Taleban.
As a result, President George W. Bush in his 9 February State of the Union speech, described the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of the "axis of evil", together with Iraq and Communist North Korea.
Some Iranian observers anyway interpreted the reported arrest of Al-Qa’eda fighters as a "victory" for Iranian reformers in their uphill struggle with the ruling conservatives led by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the all powerful leader of the Islamic Republic, who is ruling out government’s efforts, albeit timid, at normalising with outside world, including the United States.
But others saw the surprising confirmation of American claims by Iran as a new and humiliating blow dealt by the hard-liners to the remaining prestige of President Mohammad Khatami’s government, particularly the Foreign Affairs Ministry, observing that the mysterious "official source" could not appear at the State-run Television, which is under the direct control of the leader, announcing the arrest of 150 terrorist "infiltrators" without previous authorisation from Mr. Khameneh'i himself. ENDS AL-ZAWAHERI ARRESTED 18202
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