NEW YORK, April 25: US prosecutors said on Monday they had arrested a major Afghan heroin trafficker, Bashir Noorzai, who they said had provided weapons and troops to the country’s former Taliban regime. Federal prosecutors said Noorzai had been charged with conspiring to import more than 50 million dollars’ worth of heroin into the US and other countries.

US Attorney, David Kelley, said the Drug Enforcement Agency became aware that Noorzai was planning to come to the US and “they seized both the opportunity and the individual.”

He gave no other details of the arrest but said Noorzai would be arraigned in a federal court later on Monday.

Noorzai was identified by President George Bush last June as one of the world’s most wanted drug traffickers when he signed a law on the foreign narcotics trade.

According to the indictment, Noorzai has since 1990 led an international trafficking organization that manufactured and transported heroin in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It alleged that Noorzai controlled poppy fields and his organization used laboratories in Afghanistan and Pakistan to process the opium into heroin. The indictment said the detained man was closely linked to the Taliban.

It said Noorzai’s organization provided explosives, weaponry and manpower to the Taliban in exchange for the protection of its opium crops and heroin infrastructure and drug smuggling routes.—AFP