US officials have alleged that Egyptian-born Saif Al-Adel is in Iran and took part in the planning of the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh that killed 25 people, including seven US nationals.

Adel, a senior figure in both Al-Qaeda and Egypt’s outlawed Islamic Jihad, is also wanted in connection with attacks on US embassies in East Africa in 1998. A $25 million reward has been offered for information leading to his capture.

“For the moment we do not know if Saif Al-Adel is in Iran,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. He said Al-Qaeda members held here “have not yet been fully identified, so we cannot say yet who they are.”

“If it emerges that he is in Iran, we will react according to our obligations and in the same way as in the past, when we sent Al-Qaeda members arrested by us back to their country of origin,” Asefi added.

Despite having revealed in the past that hundreds of Al-Qaeda suspects had been arrested and extradited after the US ouster of Afghanistan’s Taleban regime in late 2001, Iran has only recently acknowledged that it still has a number of them still in its custody. Officials said the detainees are still being interrogated, and insisted they were having difficulties establishing the true identity of the suspects.

But while asserting that if Adel was in Iranian custody he would be extradited — most likely to Egypt — Asefi dismissed speculation in the Iranian press that he could be handed over in exchange for Massoud Rajavi, the head of the People’s Mujahedeen.