IRANIAN OFFICIALS MET BEN LADEN IN SUDAN IN 1994, REPORT
PARIS 12 Oct. (IPS) As the Islamic Republic rejected Thursday reports that at least seven of the 22 "terrorists" on the FBI’s "most wanted" men are in Iran, newspaper investigations on Osama Ben Laden and his close friends and associates suggested that he had met in 1994 with representatives from Iran in Sudan.
In an article for Los Angeles Times about Mr. Ayman Al-Zawaheri, that also was published Thursday by the influential French daily "Le Monde", Mr. T. Christian Miller, Mr. Mark Fineman and Mr. Hany Fares quoted a certain Ali Mohammad, of having told a US Court that he had arranged "end 1994, security for a meeting in Sudan between Mr. Ben Laden with leaders of the Islamic Jihad of Egypt, the Hezbollah and from Iranian government".
There was no reaction from officials in Iran about this meeting.
Iran has denounced the 11 September suicide operations in New York and in Washington D. C., but has condemned the joint US-UK air strikes on Afghanistan and has called for an immediate end to the bombings.
On Wednesday, President George W. Bush released what he termed the 22 top terrorists in the world.
Of those on the list, as many as seven are widely thought to be in Iran, compared with one in Iraq and the rest in Afghanistan, according to Vince Cannistraro, chief of CIA counter terrorist operations from 1988 to September 1990.
The new list of "known terrorists" featured Osama Ben Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which four airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Also listed for their alleged participation in the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and in Tanzania were 12 indicted Ben Laden co-conspirators, including Muhammad Atef and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, described as Mr. Ben Laden’s "brain"."An informed Iranian official here Thursday vehemently rejected and denounced as "baseless and unfounded" claims that the Islamic Republic was sheltering several terrorists", the official news agency IRNA said without identifying the source.
"This claim of the American official is categorically unfounded and baseless and such persons are not in Iran", the official told IRNA.
Four of the terrorists, including Imad Mughniyeh, a "master terrorist", are members of the Iran-backed and supported Lebanese Hezbollah and are believed to be in Iran.
The four were indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia for their alleged role in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 U.S. servicemen in an alleged Iranian-backed effort to drive U.S. forces from the Middle East.
Mughniyeh has received aid and encouragement from Iran, where he still travels frequently under the aegis of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the regime's hard-liners, according to U.S. counter-terrorism officials.
Cannistraro described Mughniyeh as "a tool of the Iranian intelligence service".
Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agreed that seven on the new list, broken down by five major attacks on U.S. interests in the 1980s and the 1990s, may be in Iran and one, Abdul Rahman Yasin, in Iraq.
Mughniyeh has also been held responsible for the detention of most, if not all, U.S. and Western hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the March 17, 1992, bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires. Hezbollah, working with Iranian diplomats, is also blamed by CIA officers for the July 18, 1994, bombing of an Argentine Jewish Cultural Centre in Buenos Aires that killed at least 85 people.
"Apart from the alleged Khobar Tower plotters believed to be in Iran, "it appears that the Saudis hold most if not all of the rest", Clawson said.
"The list contains a substantial number of terrorists who are suspected to be in Iran", said Kenneth Katzman, an expert on Islamic guerrilla groups at the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
The administration put the U.N. Security Council on notice on Tuesday that the United States, acting in self-defence after the Sept. 11 attacks killed about 5,600 people, may take "further actions with respect to other organizations and other states." ENDS IRAN TERROR LIST 121001