Abbottabad docus shed new light on Laden kin’s persona

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KUWAIT CITY, Jan 22, (Agencies): A new photo of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and the al- Qaeda spokesman in Iran has been released. The photo is part of the Abbottabad documents. The image of the 52-year-old Kuwait-born Sulaiman Abu Ghaith which was taken north of Tehran shows him in a completely different form unlike his appearances in the al-Qaeda media publications.

The image taken in 2009 showed Abu Ghaith outing with his family which was organized by the Iranian officials when the al-Qaeda was gaining a foothold in Iran. The picture was allegedly taken during ‘a family trip to the tourist areas north of Tehran organized by the prison administration’.

Apart from Abu Ghaith, the trip is likely to have included his wife Fatima bin Laden and their children, along with her brothers Hamza, Othman, Mohammad and Saad, who were all living in the same house. Abu Ghaith who also appeared in photographs during Hamza bin Laden’s marriage in Iran in 2005 was born in Kuwait in 1956 and worked as a teacher of jurisprudence and Sharia in Kuwait before joining al- Qaeda.

Abu Ghaith was close to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the coordinator of the September 11 attacks, and who is currently being tried in the United States. In 1994, Abu Ghaith left for Bosnia-Herzegovina to fight and two months later returned to Kuwait.

His travels to Bosnia and Afghanistan continued, prompting the Kuwaiti Awqaf Ministry to dismiss him. He then settled with his wife and six children in Afghanistan. Following the 9/11 attacks in New York, Abu Ghaith appeared in a video as al-Qaeda spokesman, threatening similar attacks and prompting the Kuwaiti government to withdraw his nationality.

The US incursion into Afghanistan and the defeat of the Taleban regime and al-Qaeda there forced Abu Ghaith to escape with his family in 2001. The bin Laden family and several al-Qaeda leaders then relocated to Iran and Tehran hosted them for more than 10 years.

In 2013, the Turkish security services arrested Abu Ghaith after they received a tip-off from the CIA that his son would stay in a hotel in Ankara. The Turkish security forces released him after 33 days of detention because he did not have any criminal or terrorist-related record in Turkey. He was found to have entered Turkey with an Iranian passport. Abu Ghaith was deported by the Turkish authorities to Jordan but was arrested directly by the CIA. In 2014, a US district court in New York sentenced Abu Ghaith to life imprisonment convicting him of terrorism- related charges.

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