From AP, with thanks to Terminator.
WASHINGTON – Mounting evidence gathered over several years has U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies increasingly convinced that leading terror suspects have been living in Iran. Their existence in the Islamic republic poses an ongoing problem to top Bush administration officials, who have warned Middle Eastern countries against providing shelter or other aid to terrorists.
The evidence includes communications by a fugitive mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and the capture of a Saudi militant who appeared in a video in which Osama bin Laden confirmed he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the evidence remains classified.
Saudi intelligence officers tracked and apprehended Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi last year in eastern Iran, officials said. The arrest came nearly three years after the cleric had appeared with bin Laden and discussed details of the Sept. 11 planning during a dinner that was videotaped and aired across the world.
The capture was a coup for Saudi Arabia, which spent months tracking him and setting up the intelligence operation that led to his being taken into custody in exchange for eventual amnesty.
The officials said interrogations of al-Harbi, who is now in Saudi Arabia, have yielded confirmation of many al-Qaida tactics, including how members crossed into Iran after the U.S. began military operations to rout al-Qaida and the Taliban from Afghanistan…
The U.S. and foreign officials said evidence gathered by intelligence agencies indicates the following figures are somewhere in Iran, perhaps under some form of house arrest or surveillance:
-Saad bin Laden, the son of the al-Qaida leader whom U.S. authorities have aggressively hunted since the Sept. 11 attacks.
-Saif al-Adel, an al-Qaida security chief wanted in connection with the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
-Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the chief of information for al-Qaida and a frequently quoted spokesman for bin Laden…