WASHINGTON -
Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law was recently arrested in the Middle East, was
transferred to the United States and is now in a New York jail, according to
two people briefed on the matter.
The son-in-law,
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a former spokesman for Al Qaeda, was taken into American
custody in Jordan and will appear in court in New York on Friday, one person
said. He is facing numerous charges, including material support for terrorism.
Details about
Mr. Abu Ghaith’s arrest were sketchy on Thursday, but officials said that he
was originally detained in Turkey several weeks ago. Reports in the Turkish
press said that he was deported to Jordan, where American officials took him
into custody.
English: Osama bin Laden interviewed for Daily Pakistan in 1997; behind him on the wall is an AK-47 carbine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Mr. Abu Ghaith’s
capture is a rare recent case in which a Qaeda operative was detained overseas
rather than killed. The Obama administration has expanded the use of targeted
killing operations in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. American officials have
asserted that targeted killings are approved when there is no possibility of
capture.
Jordan’s spy
service, the General Intelligence Directorate, is the Central Intelligence
Agency’s closest partner in the Middle East.
Spokesmen for
the C.I.A., the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the White House declined to
comment.
Mr. Abu Ghaith,
a Kuwaiti, was one of a group of Qaeda operatives who were living in Iran
during the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The exact nature of their
detention was the subject of debate among American counterterrorism officials,
with some officials describing their captivity as a kind of house arrest, and
others believing that Iran might be using the group to keep open communication
channels with senior Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.
Mr. Abu Ghaith,
47, was a Muslim preacher and teacher in Kuwait who spoke out against Saddam
Hussain’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. In 2000, he traveled to Afghanistan,
where he met Bin Laden. Later, he married one of Bin Laden’s daughters.
He came to wide
attention by making statements defending the Sept. 11 attacks in the days that
followed, some of them carried on Al Jazeera, and the Kuwaiti authorities
revoked his citizenship in response.
He was
frequently quoted as a spokesman for Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. In 2003, he
declared on a Web site: “We have the right to kill four million Americans — two
million of them children — and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple
hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical
and biological weapons.”
President George
W. Bush quoted the threatening statement in a speech the following year.
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