SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iran on Saturday denied a New York Times report that al Qaeda’s second-in-command was killed in Iran in August by Israeli operatives at the behest of the United States.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that there were no al Qaeda “terrorists” on Iranian soil, according to Reuters.
“From time to time, Washington and Tel Aviv try to tie Iran to such groups by lying and leaking false information to the media in order to avoid responsibility for the criminal activities of this group and other terrorist groups in the region,” the ministry said.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in the streets of Tehran on Aug. 7, the Times reported on Friday.
The killing of Masri, who was seen as a likely successor to al Qaeda’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was kept secret until now, the newspaper said.
A senior Afghan security source told Reuters in October that Masri, who has long been on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, had been killed in the Pasdaran area of Tehran. Reuters had been unable to corroborate that information.
It was unclear what, if any, role the United States had in the killing of the Egyptian-born militant, the Times said. U.S. authorities had been tracking Masri and other al Qaeda operatives in Iran for years, it said.
Masri, one of al Qaeda’s founding leaders, was killed along with his daughter, the Times reported. She was the widow of former al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s son.
Iran and al Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim militant organization, have long been enemies.
Masri had been in Iran’s “custody” since 2003 but had been living freely in an upscale suburb of Tehran since 2015, the Times cited unnamed U.S. intelligence officials as saying.
U.S. counterterrorism officials believe Iran, also a U.S. enemy, may have let him live there to conduct operations against U.S. targets, the Times said.
