- Pentagon Says Top Bin Laden Aide Detained -

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - A high-level Al Qaeda operative who helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan in 2001 during the U.S. military operation has been captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon and CIA said Friday.

Muhammad Rahim, an Afghani was captured last July in Lahore, Pakistan, by Pakistani authorities, who quickly handed him over to the CIA, according to sources familiar with Rahim's detention. Ramim was then kept in secret custody by the CIA until he was handed over to the Pentagon and to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay this week.

CIA spokesman George E. Little said he could not comment on where Rahim was held since last summer, what kinds of interrogation techniques he was subjected to, and what he might have told his interrogators.

Some of the other suspected senior Al Qaeda leaders in CIA custody have been subjected to controversial coercive methods of interrogation techniques, including a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

I cannot characterize what he may or may not have said while in CIA custody, Little said. His detention by the CIA was part of a lawful program that has yielded valuable information in the nation's efforts to fight terror.