Al Qaeda said to have migrated to Iran

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s intelligence community believes that the operational base of al Qaeda has shifted to Iran from Pakistan after the arrest of the network’s military operations chief, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Mohammed was arrested by Pakistan’s powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in Rawalpindi on Feb. 28.

Pakistani intelligence officials said they since received cogent information that several key al Qaeda fugitives who were hiding in Pakistan had moved to Iran.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview during his Washington trip late last month that some al Qaeda operatives “certainly” had relocated to Iran in the wake of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, although he could not say for certain who the fugitives were.

“Al Qaeda is on the run, and they are transiting to all the neighboring countries,” Gen. Musharraf told editors and reporters at a luncheon June 26 at The Washington Times. “Certainly, they are transiting to Iran as well, although we can’t say for sure how senior these people are.”

Saif Al-Adel, an Egyptian national who has been appointed the military chief of al Qaeda after the arrest of Mohammed, is hiding in the Iranian city of Zahedan, which borders with Pakistan, Pakistani intelligence officials say.

Other leaders include Osama bin Laden’s eldest son, Saad bin Laden; Yaaz bin Sifat, a top ranking al Qaeda planner; Abu Mohammad al-Masri; and various former ministers of Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban government.

A former mayor of Kabul during the Taliban regime, Mohammed Islam Haani, was arrested recently by Afghan troops while trying to cross into Iran.

Intelligence officials believe that some 250 al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives are hiding in Iran.

Pakistan’s intelligence agencies recently arrested two officials of the country’s passport agency from the border city of Peshawar on charges of providing fake passports to hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban.

Gen. Musharraf called the passport incident “very disturbing to us,” saying Pakistan was attempting to develop more sophisticated systems to prevent such forgeries.

He said an internal investigation found that the officials involved were motivated by money, not by sympathy for al Qaeda or the Taliban.

“There was nothing here tied to the support of extremism. There was no attachment or link to al Qaeda,” he said. “From what we have uncovered, it was a case of simple corruption.”

During initial investigations, the passport officials confessed to helping many al Qaeda and Taliban leaders flee Pakistan. Intelligence officials believe that the majority of those fugitives are hiding in Iran.

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