Dubai, 30 March (AKI) – Osama bin Laden’s son, Saad bin Laden, and a number of leaders of the al-Qaeda terrorist network are in Iran, according to a group of terrorism experts featured in a programme on the Arabic satellite television channel Al Arabiya. The programme, entitled “The Death Factory, is expected to air on Friday evening. The programme is part of a weekly series that examines Islamic terrorism and armed groups active in Iraq and other warzones.

According to these experts, the leader of al-Qaeda’s old guard have either been arrested or are free but under the surveillance of Iranian authorities.

Among these al-Qaeda members is Saad bin Laden, as well as Sayf al-Adel, the former spokesperson of the group, as well as Suleyman Abu al-Ghaith, Muhammad Shouki al-Islambuli and other Arab terrorists.

According to a researcher at the Centre for Arab-Iranian Studies in London, Nuri Zadah, all these al-Qaeda members are believed to be in Iran since the fall of the hardline Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001.

This opinion was shared by the Egyptian researcher, Abdel Rahim Ali, who also noted that the former al-Qaeda spokesman, Kuwaiti, Suleyman Abu al-Ghaith, is in Iran because his government refused the offer by the Iranian authorities to send him to Kuwait City.