ANKARA: The United States has asked Turkey to extradite Osama Bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith after his detention in Ankara last week, a Turkish newspaper reported yesterday.
Abu Gaith, the former spokesman of the Al-Qaeda terror network, was seized last week at a luxury hotel in Ankara after a tip-off from CIA, and is being held there by police, the newspaper said.
Ankara police declined to comment on the report while a spokesman for the US embassy in Ankara said it would not comment on terror-related cases.
“All I can tell you is that we cooperate with the Turkish authorities on various fields,” spokesman TJ Grubisha told AFP.
The United States wants Abu Gaith extradited over his alleged connection to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and Ankara is considering the request, Hurriyet added.
Abu Gaith’s detention after he allegedly entered the country illegally from Iran came in the same week that the US embassy in Ankara was targeted in a suicide bombing claimed by a radical anti-US leftwing group.
Ankara considers Ghaith a “stateless” person as he was stripped of his Kuwaiti nationality after appearing in videos defending the 9/11 attacks and threatening further violence.
He appeared in a propaganda video in the aftermath of 9/11, standing beside Bin Laden, who was killed in May 2011 in Pakistan in a covert US operation.
