US government sources said Suleiman Abu Ghaith had appeared in al-Qaida videos praising the 9/11 attacks
A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who served as al-Qaida's spokesman has been detained in Jordan, US government sources said on Thursday.
The sources said Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a militant who had appeared in videos representing al-Qaida after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, had initially been picked up in Turkey.
The Turkish government then deported him to Jordan, said the sources, where local authorities and the FBI took custody of him.
Initial public confirmation of Abu Ghaith's capture came from Peter King, a senior Republican member of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, and former chairman of the House committee on homeland security.
"I commend our CIA and FBI, our allies in Jordan, and President Obama for their capture of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. I trust he received a vigorous interrogation, and will face swift and certain justice," King said in a statement.
"Propaganda statements in which Abu Ghaith and his late father-in-law, Osama bin Laden, praised the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are alone enough to merit the most serious punishment."
US sources indicated that, while a CIA role in the capture of Abu Ghaith could not be ruled out, the FBI took the lead role in the operation under the auspices of an inter-agency body known as the high-value detainee interrogation group.
The group was created by the Obama administration after the president ordered the permanent shutdown of a CIA program in which militant suspects were detained and held in a network of secret prisons, during the administration of President George W Bush. The suspects were sometimes subjected to controversial and physically coercive "enhanced interrogation techniques," and also sometimes transferred without trial to third countries under a procedure known as "extraordinary rendition."
Precisely what the FBI and interrogation group now intend to do with Abu Ghaith was not immediately known. Sources said one possibility is that he could be brought to the United States for trial in an American court.
The Justice Department declined to comment.