Pakistan arrested a former Taliban spokesman released by Afghanistan in 2007 in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, intelligence officials said — a high-profile catch when many in the West are concerned tension with India could distract Pakistan from fighting militants.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar sent his former spokesman, Ustad Mohammed Yasir, to Pakistan last year to mediate between two Taliban groups in the Mohmand tribal area on the Afghan border, an intelligence official said on Saturday.
Many Taliban and al-Qaeda militants fled to Pakistan in 2001 after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime. The US has pushed Pakistan to crack down on the militants, who have regrouped in the country’s northwest and have launched attacks against Western forces across the border in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani military has launched several operations along the Afghan border, including one earlier last week to secure the main supply route for US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. But many in the West have questioned Islamabad’s willingness to target the Taliban because Pakistan backed the hard-line regime before its ouster.
Pakistan’s recent decision to redeploy troops away from the Afghan border toward India following tension over the deadly Mumbai attacks has heightened concerns that the fight against militants could languish. India has blamed Pakistani militants for the November attacks in India’s commercial capital that killed more than 160 people.
Pakistan first arrested Yasir in 2005 and sent him to Afghanistan, where he was released along with four other Taliban members in exchange for Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, an intelligence official said.
The Afghan and Italian governments were heavily criticized for the swap — a step many observers feared would encourage more kidnappings.
Pakistani authorities arrested Yasir again on Thursday during a raid on his relatives’ house in the northwestern city of Peshawar near the Afghan border, a second intelligence official said. Security personnel are now interrogating Yasir, who served as the Taliban leader’s spokesman after the fall of the regime, the official added.
Omar escaped during the US-led invasion, and his location is unknown.
The intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Meanwhile, Two paramilitary soldiers were killed and four wounded in a landmine explosion in insurgency-hit southwest Pakistan on Saturday, an official said.
The soldiers were patrolling a gas field in the town of Dera Bugti in gas-rich Baluchistan Province on the border with Afghanistan and Iran when a landmine planted on a roadside exploded under their vehicle.
“Two soldiers were killed and four others wounded in the incident,” a spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps said.
A spokesman for the Baluch Republican Army, Sarbaz Khan, later claimed responsibility of the attack. Hundreds of people have died in violence in the province since the insurgency flared in late 2004, with rebels demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources.
The province has also been hit by attacks blamed on Taliban militants and sectarian extremists.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS