U.S. Said to Be Secretly Holding Sept. 11 Suspect
A suspected Al Qaeda leader accused of being involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and planning the 2004 Madrid train bombings has been imprisoned in a secret U.S. jail for the last year, Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported Sunday.
Mustafa Setmarian, 48, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistani and European security service officials told the newspaper.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Spain declined to comment on the report.
The capture of Setmarian, the alleged founder of Al Qaeda’s Spanish network, was reported in May of this year.
Pakistan has not answered requests from Madrid about Setmarian’s whereabouts. He is wanted in Spain for allegedly training Sept. 11 hijackers in Afghanistan and ordering the Madrid commuter train attacks that killed 191 people, according to El Pais.
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