Hat tip to Circling the Lion's Den for picking up this German news story:
Interesting article in Spiegel Online that says former al-Qaeda military chief Saif al-Adel, who has spent the last nine years under house arrest in Iran, is now in Waziristan. The article claims that al-Adel, who is Egyptian, was freed by the Iranians in exchange for unnamed Iranian prisoners kidnapped by al-Qaeda.
Link:http://circlingthelionsden.blogspot....-chief-in.html and the German report:http://www.spiegel.de/international/...725181,00.html

The later is written by a journalist who I respect, although the basis of the report is a well-known defector from LIFG (Libyan AQ aligned group) and his still current networking.

This sentence is enough:
With his help, the weakened terror network could reorganize itself.
I do recall reading years ago that Iran had detained a number of AQ suspects, al-Adel was allegedly released earlier in 2010 - in a swop for Iranian prisoners. One wonders how he feels about the Iranian regime.

Makes the current increase in drone attacks more interesting.