Cheney confirms son of blind cleric captured

"We have been involved. We've got people on the ground who are helping interrogate and screen these folks that are being held," Cheney said.

Cheney indicated Abdel-Rahman was likely to face trial before a U.S. military tribunal.

"The president will make a decision on each case, but clearly a high-ranking al-Qaida official captured in Afghanistan who's been involved in the organization is exactly the kind of individual the tribunals were established for," the vice president said.

The blind Egyptian sheik convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks is locked up in a Minnesota prison, perhaps unaware that his son has been captured by anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

"He's cut off completely from the whole world, not even allowed to have a radio," lawyer Abdeen Jabara said of Omar Abdel-Rahman, 63, who is serving a life sentence.

It was unclear what role, if any, Ahmed Abdel-Rahman played in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization, though northern alliance officials said he constituted a "major catch."

The elder Abdel-Rahman was convicted of seditious conspiracy in New York after prosecutors said he gave the go-ahead for plots to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and to blow up five New York landmarks, including the United Nations. He has also been linked to the men who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.

He is imprisoned at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn., where Jabara said his contact with the outside world is limited to a hourlong telephone conversation once a week with his lawyers.

Traci Billingsley, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman, said privacy rules prevented her from talking about Abdel-Rahman, who was transferred to Rochester on Jan. 14, 1998.

Jabara said he did not know if the sheik was aware of stories about Ahmed, or a second son, Mohammed, who reportedly was also being sought in Afghanistan by those opposing the Taliban.

In Cairo, lawyer Montasser el-Zayat, who defends Islamic militant suspects, said the cleric's sons were not members of al-Qaida.

A third son, Abdullah, who lives in Cairo, sought to enter the United States in the last six months to visit his father but was denied a visa because he could not prove he would return to Egypt, Jabara said.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Abdel-Rahman was permitted a 15-minute telephone conversation once a week with his wife in Egypt, Jabara said. Since the attacks, the sheik has not spoken to his family, he said.

Investigators have long known that before Abdel-Rahman's arrest in 1993, calls were placed from his telephone to at least one of bin Laden's training camps, according to a law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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Associated Press Writer Pat Milton contributed to this report.

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