Tehran, May 26: Iran today said it was not holding any "important leaders" of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda in its jails, a day after a top diplomat revealed some members of the terror network were in Iranian custody. "Al-Qaeda members have been arrested in Iran, but the persons imprisoned are not important leaders of Al-Qaeda," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi told state radio. Asefi's comment came after Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, said that Iran was holding an undisclosed number of the group's members. "We have had a number of Al-Qaeda people in custody, and we continue to keep them in detention, and we continue to interrogate them, and once we have any information from them, we will pass them to friendly governments," Zarif told ABC news in an interview from Tehran.
Iran previously asserted that any suspected members of the militant Islamist network arrested in the Islamic Republic had been quickly extradited.

The United States and Iran recently conducted discreet contacts after decades of estrangement, but those talks were broken off by Washington amid reports Al-Qaeda operatives hiding in Iran were involved in planning the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia.

Bureau Report