New York, NY – Extraordinary Informant On Al Qaeda Suspects Sits In NYC Jail.

New York, NY – On May 3, 2002, a small plane landed at Toronto’s island airport carrying a team of U.S. officials who had come to take custody of a young Canadian al-Qaeda member named Mohammed Mansour Jabarah.

Five years later, Mr. Jabarah remains imprisoned in New York, but that is all that can be said about him with certainty. U.S. prosecutors will not comment on his case and prison officials will not let him to talk to the press.

Canadian Foreign Affairs officials will say almost nothing about him, citing the Privacy Act. The only official record of his fate comes from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which lists him as a 25-year-old inmate at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York.

Even by post-9/11 standards, the secrecy surrounding Mr. Jabarah’s case seems extraordinary, but details emerging from military tribunal hearings at Guantanamo Bay may explain why his case is considered so sensitive: Of the 15 “high-value” al-Qaeda suspects held at Guantanamo, Mr. Jabarah has given the FBI information on five of them

In addition, during his interviews with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and FBI, Mr. Jabarah talked about Osama bin Laden, his lieutenant, Ayman Al Zawahiri, and four of the 9/11 hijackers. [national post]