A senior al-Qaeda figure with close ties to the terrorist group’s current leader has left Iran, where he had lived for years after fleeing American forces in Afghanistan in 2001, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials.
Thirwat Shihata is the latest suspected terrorist to leave Iran, raising questions about the country’s motives for allowing or forcing the departure of a string of al-Qaeda membersthat it had sheltered over the past decade.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, dozens of al-Qaeda fighters, including some senior personnel, fled to Iran. It has never been clear how much freedom of movement they enjoyed while in the country, but for some the welcome appears to be over.
In the past two years, up to a dozen notable figures have left Iran, and two — Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, accused in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and former spokesman — have subsequently ended up in U.S. custody.
A top-secret 2008 U.S. document, which was leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, lists 13 senior al-Qaeda figures or associates in Iran. Five were listed as “senior management” in the terror group and of those, three have left Iran in recent years. Among them was Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, al-Qaeda’s ideological chief better known as Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, who returned to his native Mauritania in 2012.
The former official said there was information that while in Libya in 2013, Shihata possibly met Ruqai, also known as Anas al-Libi, and Zubayr al-Maghrebi, another al-Qaeda figure who has left Iran.
Seth Jones, an analyst at the Rand Corp., said the relationship between al-Qaeda and Iran is difficult to unwind. At one point the CIA had even talked to Iran about a trade, but it never went anywhere; in return for al-Qaeda suspects, Tehran would get some Iranian dissidents based in Iraq.
In 2011, Shihata issued a statement backing the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, according to the Long War Journal. He issued the statement from Iran.