In a secret report to the Italian government and the Parliament’s National Security Committee, the SISMI says that Mr. Ben Laden, alleged to have masterminded several daring terrorist operations against the United States, including the 11 September attacks on New York’s World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon in Washington D. C., had left his base in Afghanistan for Iran days before the 11 September operations, that killed more than 3.500 people.

As a result of the 11 September operations, in which three passenger planes hijacked by highly trained members of the al-Qa’eda crushed on the World Trade Center towers and on the Pentagon, the United States attacked Afghanistan and toppled the Islamist fundamentalist Taleban government that had provided sanctuary to al-Qa’eda, but its search for Osama Ben laden, a Saudi national, has so far remained unsuccessful.

Iran has always denied any link with al-Qa’eda and rejected as "baseless" allegations that Ben Laden was hiding in Iran, but at the same time admitted that up to five hundred members of the network who had crossed the porous Iran borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan had been detained, some of them handed over to the countries they had their passports, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Afghanistan, Belgium or Italy.

"Though I can not tell more on the details of the report, but I can confirm that based on what our security organisation has stated in the report, firstly Osama Ben Laden is alive and secondly he has left Afghanistan, hiding in another country that could be the Islamic Republic of Iran", he said, confirming that al-Qa’eda planned terrorist operations in Italy.

"Mr. Ben laden was seen in the Islamic Republic, more precisely in Tehran in May, where he met with seven members of the network, planning attacks on American and British interests, but also some European and Asian countries like Italia, Pakistan and Turkey", the SISMI reported.