Sunday Times 2
U.S. agents tracked bin Laden’s son-in-law for years before arrest
View(s):WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) – U.S. investigators tracked Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, for about 10 years before he was detained in Jordan and brought by the FBI to New York City in the past few days, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation said.
Osama bin Laden's son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (AFP)
An FBI agent and a New York police detective together spent more than a decade investigating Abu Ghaith, not only for his role as a spokesman for al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington but for activities they believed he was involved in before 2001, said one official.
On Friday, Abu Ghaith pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court to conspiring to kill Americans, becoming one of the highest-ranking al Qaeda figures to face trial in the United States for crimes connected to the Sept. 11 attacks.
He was captured on Feb. 28 and brought secretly to the United States on March 1, prosecutors said in court. Law enforcement sources say he was detained in Jordan by local authorities and the FBI after was believed to have been expelled from Turkey.
But it was in Iran where Abu Ghaith is believed to have spent most of the past decade, having taken refuge there following Sept. 11, 2001, with a group of other associates of bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011.
Follow @timesonlinelk
comments powered by Disqus