Top Al Qaeda Agent in Iran, Official Says

The senior Iranian official declined to say how or when Abu Ghaith and the others had been apprehended or where they were being held. However, diplomats from another country indicated that Abu Ghaith, a native of Kuwait, had been in custody at least since June.

Diplomats said they believed the detainees were in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, a region in eastern Iran populated by Sunni Muslims sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

U.S. officials were skeptical. "Everybody on the U.S. side has been saying, 'Not to our knowledge,' " said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We did have knowledge of a number of Al Qaeda people in Iran under some circumstance, rumors of them being taken into some kind of custody, the nature of which is unclear. Abu Ghaith is one of them."

Abu Ghaith has appeared on a number of video and audiotapes taking responsibility for Al Qaeda attacks, including a bombing at a Kenyan hotel last year that killed 16 people. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, he appeared in a video and vowed that a "storm of airplanes" would continue to strike American targets until the U.S. ended its "crusade" against Afghanistan and Islam.

Western nations, including the U.S., have for months alleged that Al Qaeda members are in Iran. Tehran has said it has arrested a number of suspected Al Qaeda members, but it has kept the number of detainees and their identities tightly guarded.

What Iran intends to do with those in its custody is complicated by long-standing fractures among the different Iranian state institutions, such as the Intelligence Ministry, nominally under the control of reformist President Mohammad Khatami; the Revolutionary Guards, loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and the hard-line judiciary, controlled by powerful clerics.

The senior reformist official said Iran has been seeking to exchange information about those in custody in return for guarantees from Western governments to, in effect, shut down the Moujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian opposition group that wants to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran. The Iranians want the group's activities to be banned in Iraq, its longtime base of operations, as well as in Europe.