Time: U.S. Spurned Iran Offers to Turn Over Bin Laden's Son

[deminks]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1913323,00.html?xid=rss-world

It may have been a case of hitting the target but missing the opportunity. Reports last week said Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's fourth son and a mid-ranking al-Qaeda operative, was killed by a recent CIA Predator strike. But six years ago, the U.S. had an opportunity to get him alive, but lost it when the Bush administration decided to pull away from cooperation with Iran.

Saad's death has not yet been confirmed, but U.S. officials believe he was one of the victims of a missile strike earlier this year in northern Pakistan. A counterterrorism official tells TIME: "There are some indications that he may be dead, but it's not 100% certain."

Believed to be in his late 20s, Saad is one of two bin Laden sons known to be actively involved in their father's jihadi enterprise; his older brother Mohammed is still at large, believed to be in Pakistan. (Osama has at least nine other sons, and six daughters.) Saad had only recently returned to the Afghan-Pakistani border after nearly six years under house arrest in Iran. He was one of several al-Qaeda commanders, including military chief Saif al-Adel, captured by Iranian authorities in the spring and summer of 2003, as they tried to sneak across the border from Afghanistan.

At the time, the Bush administration and the Iranian regime were secretly cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In February of that year, Iranian officials gave their U.S. counterparts photocopies of the passports of over 200 Arabs — including Saad bin Laden — who had been turned away at the Afghan border. The Iranians worried that many of them would likely enter the country illegally, through the porous border. Hillary Mann Everett, then an official with the National Security Council and one of a handful of Americans involved in negotiations with Tehran, says the Iranians were concerned that if Saad did sneak in, they would not be able to repatriate him to his native Saudi Arabia, because authorities in Riyadh were unwilling to accept any of Osama's kin.

(end snip)

Like father (at Tora Bora), like son, it appears we let 'em go. Funny how their deaths are never confirmed, keeping the threat alive.

Whiskey, tango, foxtrot.

[liberal N proud]

1. Why am I not surprised

This was standard bu$hshit thinking

[blm]

2. I've been told many times here at DU that Bush-BinLaden alliance is just conspiracy talk

Well, how many times does a 'coincidence' regarding Bushes and BinLadens have to pop up before people realize that there really has been a mutually beneficial, longtime understanding between the two?

[blm]

3. K&R

.