Word: bins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Believed to be in his late 20s, Saad is one of two bin Laden sons known to be actively involved in their father's jihadist 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...
...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 had given their U.S. counterparts photocopies of the passports of more than 200 Arabs - including Saad bin Laden - who had been turned away at the Afghan border. The Iranians worried that many of them would enter the country illegally through the porous border. Hillary Mann Leverett, 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...
...whom the Iranians would presumably have detained if they once again tried to cross the border). But, says Leverett, the Bush Administration insisted that the Iranians deport the Arabs without any preconditions. By May, negotiations between the two countries broke down, and the chance was lost. Shortly thereafter, Saad bin Laden succeeded in crossing the border. Details of what happened next are murky, but he didn't get far: the Iranian authorities seem to have nabbed him almost immediately. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...
...Americans just couldn't bring themselves to trust the Iranians, even though they had been pretty straight in their dealings over al-Qaeda and the Taliban," says the official. Instead, the U.S. decided to protect the MEK, even over the objections of Iraq's elected government. (Read "Bin Laden's Son Loses Political-Asylum Bid in Spain...
...into the MEK's camp north of Baghdad on July 28.) Given the decline of the MEK's fortunes in Iraq, Tehran seems to have decided in late 2008 that the al-Qaeda commanders under house arrest had lost their value as bargaining chips. Several of them, including Saad bin Laden, appear to have been taken to the border with Pakistan and released. For Saad, however, freedom lasted only a few weeks before he was allegedly killed by a Hellfire missile...