Iran has custody of top Al Qaida members

Iran has custody of several high-ranking Al Qaida members, including spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a senior reformist official close to Iran's president said over the weekend.

Diplomats in Tehran representing three countries also say that, based on their intelligence, Abu Ghaith is among those in custody.

The senior Iranian official declined to say how or when Abu Ghaith and the others had been apprehended, or where they were being held. However, diplomats from another country indicated that Abu Ghaith, a native of Kuwait, has been in custody at least since June.

Diplomats said they believed the detainees were in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, a region in eastern Iran populated by people sympathetic to Al Qaida.

U.S. officials were sceptical. "Everybody on the U.S. side has been saying not to our knowledge," said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We did have knowledge of a number of Al Qaida people in Iran under some circumstance, rumours of them being taken into some kind of custody, the nature of which is unclear. Abu Ghaith is one of them.''

Abu Ghaith has appeared on a number of video and audiotapes taking responsibility for Al Qaida attacks, including a bombing at a Kenyan hotel last year that killed 16 people.

Shortly after September 11, he appeared in a video and vowed that a "storm of airplanes'' would continue to strike American targets until the U.S. ended its "crusade".

What Iran intends to do with those in its custody is complicated by long-standing fractures among the Iranian government factions, including the Ministry of Intelligence, the Revolutionary Guards and the hard-line judiciary.