ISLAMABAD, March 3: US and Pakistani agents were interrogating the Taliban’s former defence minister on Saturday in the hope that he can help them hunt down other militant leaders, security officials said.
Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, who had a $1 million bounty on his head posted by the US Central Intelligence Agency, was arrested with four other suspects on Wednesday in Quetta.
Pakistani officials said Akhund, a key aide to Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar and an insurgent commander in southern Afghanistan, was flown to Islamabad by helicopter after his capture.
“He is being interrogated by a joint team of Pakistani and US officials in Islamabad,” a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The official did not specify which US agency the officials were from, although the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation are operating in Pakistan in small numbers.
“Obaidullah is an important figure in the militant network and the authorities will want to know the strength of the group and its tentacles in Pakistan,” the official added.
Akhund was arrested at a Quetta hotel on the basis of “very solid” intelligence, officials said. Plain-clothes agents picked him up when he arrived at the hotel where the other four suspects were already staying.
“It is a major breakthrough and we hope he can lead to the arrest of a few others of the most wanted Taliban commanders,” the security official said.
He did not say which other Taliban militants were under scrutiny.
Afghan and Western officials have repeatedly said the Taliban’s leadership is based in Quetta. The Taliban’s former chief spokesman was seized in the city in 2005.
A senior government official said there was a greater focus now on Balochistan by intelligence agencies to flush out Taliban militants hiding in the region.
“The law-enforcement set-up in the province has been beefed up in the past few months and there is a greater intelligence focus on the Taliban activities in the area,” the official said.—AFP
