Saif al-Adl, a former colonel in the Egyptian military, is listed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list.
The government of Iran released five senior al-Qaida members this year, including the man who stepped in to serve as the terror group's interim leader immediately after Osama bin Laden's death, and who is the subject of a $5 million bounty, according to a U.S. official who had been briefed on the matter.
Iran's release of the five men was part of a prisoner swap in March with al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, the group holding an Iranian diplomat, Nour Ahmad Nikbakht. Nikbakht was kidnapped in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in July 2013.
The Iranian government denied that the five men had been freed in a statement Thursday, after the release was reported by Sky News this week. The U.S. official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter, confirmed the release of Saif al-Adl, a senior member of al-Qaida's ruling body, who oversaw the organization immediately after bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs in Pakistan in 2011.
Analysts tracking al-Qaida described the release as alarming, given the seniority of the five men.
Of special concern is the release of al-Adl, a former colonel in the Egyptian military believed to be in his 50s, who is listed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list, and who was indicted in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa.
Cynthia Storer, who was the CIA's first full-time analyst dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, called him a "founding father."
A Qaida analyst, Michael S. Smith II of Kronos Advisory, who has tracked al-Adl's rise, describes him as "the biggest fish of the big fish" and argued that al-Qaida's future would rest on the shoulders of Saif al-Adl."
According to the official briefed on the details of the transfer, the other four men released by Iran were Abdul Khayr al-Misri, an Egyptian who formerly headed al-Qaida's foreign relations council; Abul Qassam, a Jordanian who was a deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of the organization that later became the Islamic State; Sari Shibab, a Jordanian operative; and Abu Mohamed al-Misri, an Egyptian who helped orchestrate al-Qaida's major attacks before Sept. 11, 2001.
© 2015, The New York Times News Service