LONDON, Dec 24, (AFP): Iran has released a string of top al-Qaeda militants from detention so they can rebuild the extremist organisation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, The Times reported Friday.
Citing Pakistani and Middle Eastern officials speaking anonymously, the Times said Iranian authorities were giving covert support to the Islamist militants as they fight against NATO troops.
“In many cases they are being facilitated by Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” The Times quoted a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying.
The Times said those released include Saif al-Adel, a high-ranking Egyptian al-Qaeda member on the FBI’s most wanted list for alleged involvement in the deadly 1998 bombings of US embassiess in East Africa.
They also include Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti accused of being al-Qaeda’s official spokesman at the time of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, and Abu Khayr al-Masri, a key aide to al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
Three members of the family of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were also among those freed, the officials were quoted by the Times as saying.
Several top al-Qaeda leaders fled to Iran when the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 and Iran is suspected of keeping them under house arrest as a strategic asset against the United States.
Al-Qaeda’s top leadership including Bin Laden and Zawahiri are believed to be in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, but a blitz of CIA drone strikes has taken a major toll on the group.
The Times quoted Pakistani officials as saying that Al-Adel had been named al-Qaeda’s chief of operations for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In July, Bin Laden’s son Omar said that 20 members of the al-Qaeda chief’s family were stranded in Iran as Tehran was refusing to discuss their fate with Saudi Arabia.
However a Kuwaiti newspaper reported in November that a number of leading al-Qaeda members, including Abu Ghaith, had moved from Iran to Yemen.
Pakistan gun battles
Taleban insurgents launched co-ordinated attacks on five paramilitary checkpoints in northwestern Pakistan Friday, leaving at least 11 soldiers and 24 militants dead, officials said.
“At least 11 of our men have been martyred and 12 others wounded,” Amjad Ali Khan, the administrator of lawless Mohmand tribal district, told reporters at a press conference in the area’s main town, Ghalanai.
Security officials earlier said at least three soldiers were killed in the attacks.
Khan said that at least 24 militants were killed when paramilitary soldiers “befittingly repulsed” the attack at five checkpoints near the border with Afghanistan.
“The army has sent helicopter gunships and bombed suspected hide outs of Taleban,” Khan said.
Earlier a senior security official told AFP: “About 150 Taleban militants attacked five Frontier Corps checkposts in Baidnami village near the border with Afghanistan.

Security forces had cordoned off the area and were searching for the fleeing militants, he said, while reinforcements were sent in “to beef up the checkpoints”.
Local administration officials in Ghalanai and the paramilitary force confirmed the attack and casualties.
In a telephone call to AFP Taleban spokesman for Mohmand district Sajjad Mohmand claimed two paramilitary soldiers had been captured but security officials rejected the claim, saying no one was missing.
“We have killed 12 soldiers and occupied a checkpost,” Mohmand said.
Mohmand district has seen much of the violence linked to Taleban militants in northwestern Pakistan. On Dec 6, twin suicide bombings killed 43 people in Ghalanai, about 175 kms (110 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
Meanwhile, a bomb fitted with a timer exploded in a private boys’ primary school in Peshawar’s Pelosi neighbourhood, wounding four children, senior police official Shafiullah Khan told AFP.
“Four children were wounded in the bomb blast at a primary school,” Khan said, adding that the children were in the playground during break time when the bomb exploded indoors.