Al Qaeda wants to swap US hostage for Spanish-Syrian terrorist

Ayman al Zawahiri, the successor to Osama bin Laden, wants to exchange a US hostage for the founder of the Spanish branch of Al Qaeda, who was arrested in 2005 and whose whereabouts are unknown.

Warren Weinstein, 70, an American business consultant in developing countries, was kidnapped in Pakistan four months ago, while Mustafa Setmarian - a native of Syria nationalized as a Spaniard and married to a Spanish woman, with whom he has five children - was taken by the CIA to an undisclosed location after his detention.

The fact that Al Zawahiri is now demanding his return is further proof of Setmarian's relevance within the organization, where he was considered the number three man.

Spanish intelligence services and the Civil Guard are now analyzing the radio message broadcast by Al Zawahiri last week with his demands.

Setmarian was arrested in Quetta, Pakistan and turned over to CIA and FBI agents, who took him to secret jails, possibly to the naval base of Diego García, a British island in the Indian Ocean. For the last six years, his whereabouts have been a mystery, but last May, EL PAÍS disclosed secret documents from the US Defense Department dated 2008 and written by military sources at Guantánamo, which stated that the alleged terrorist had been turned over to Syria.

This was the first time that an official US document with information on Setmarian's location had been published. Before his arrest and disappearance, the FBI had placed him fourth on its most-wanted list and offered a five-million-dollar reward for his arrest.

The US never replied to his wife Elena Moreno's numerous inquiries regarding his whereabouts. Neither has the Syrian government answered the Spanish High Court, which is waiting to try Setmarian on several counts of terrorism. In 2001, Judge Baltasar Garzón issued an arrest warrant that is still in place. Following Garzón's letter rogatory to US authorities, he received a succint reply stating that Setmarian could not be found in the US.

A protected witness says that he recognized Setmarian from a newspaper photograph as the alleged perpetrator of the 1985 terrorist attack against a Madrid restaurant called El Descanso, which killed 18 people. The witness, who lost his partner and another person who was dining with them at the time, says the terrorist who placed the bomb bore an "extraordinary" resemblance to the Syrian-Spanish member of Al Qaeda. That case was provisionally closed until the perpetrator could be found and brought before the Spanish courts.

Besides Setmarian, Al Zawahiri is demanding freedom for three Al Qaeda members who were sentenced to life in prison over the 1993 attack against the World Trade Center in New York, as well as three other men.