A Taliban-linked drug lord who allegedly sought to poison US streets with millions of dollars of heroin in a deadly "American jihad" has become the first person extradited from Afghanistan to face federal charges, officials said.
Haji Baz Mohammad, one of the world's "most wanted, most powerful and most dangerous" drug kingpins, had helped finance the Taliban by selling opium since 1990, US Drug Enforcement Administrator Karen Tandy said on Monday.
"In return, the Taliban protected Mohammad's crops, his heroin labs, his drug transportation labs and his associates," Tandy said, after a conspiracy indictment was unsealed accusing Mohammad of smuggling more than US$25 million in heroin into the US and elsewhere.
The defendant was arrested in Afghanistan in January and arrived in the US on Friday, US drug enforcement authorities said.
In his first appearance in court on Monday, Mohammad said through an interpreter, "I am innocent." He was ordered held without bail. His lawyer declined to comment afterward.
According to the indictment, Mohammad told associates at his home in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1990 that selling heroin was a form of jihad, or Islamic holy war, because they were taking money from Americans while giving them something that was killing them.
US Attorney Michael Garcia said drug dealers such as Mohammad seek "to destabilize Afghanistan's emerging democracy, flood the Western markets with heroin and use their profits to support the Taliban and other terrorist groups."
The indictment alleged that Mohammad and co-defendant Bashir Ahmad Rahmany had conspired since 1990 with others to violate narcotics laws. Rahmany was arrested in New York in July and is awaiting trial.
The indictment said the two men led an international heroin-trafficking organization responsible for manufacturing and transporting hundreds of kilograms of heroin in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The traffickers then arranged for the heroin to be exported to the US and other countries in suitcases, clothing and containers and sold for tens of millions of dollars, the indictment said.
If convicted, Mohammad and Rahmany face maximum terms of life in prison.
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