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Fair enough.

Basically, after the Riyadh bombings, which were ordered by Saif al-Adel (the group's military commander) from an IRGC military base according to the NSA, the US started accusing Iran of actively harboring a lot of al-Qaeda's leadership. Iran then announced that they suddenly "discovered" these al-Qaeda leaders in their country and that they had been detained. The names of the detainees being circulated around through anonymous press sources were Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's #2), Saif al-Adel, Suleiman Abu Ghaith (the spokesman), Saad bin Laden (the heir apparent), and Abu Mohammed al-Masri (the overall training camp commander).

Recently, we got confirmation that Suleiman Abu Ghaith was being held in Iran by the Kuwaiti Interior Minister, who said that Iran had offered to extradict him to Kuwait (Abu Ghaith was a Kuwaiti national prior to October 2001, when he appeared on a videotape flanking bin Laden) but that they had declined, which is exceeding odd given that he is wanted for conspiracy, treason, and incitement to violence in Kuwait. I still think there's more to this than meets the eye ...

In any case, recently an audiotaped statement with all of classic supervillain rhetoric appeared on Dubai Radio attributed to Suleiman Abu Ghaith. I've listened to it, and barring NSA analysis and the fact that Abu Ghaith is (temporarily) still breathing, I see no reason to dispute that interpretation. But the fact of the matter is that the hundreds (thousands) of Iranian students who have been rounded up by the Baseej since the protests began have had no way to communicate with the outside world, yet the al-Qaeda detainees seem to have no trouble in doing so. This is in of itself rather suspicious.

Now you have al-Zawahiri, the second most wanted man on the planet, making yet another rant to al-Arabiyyah. It references fairly recent events (US getting ready to try Guantanamo detainees, for example) and as such basically exposes this whole "detention" story for the sham that it always was.