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Pakistanis grill Taliban official on militant links

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 07:44 CDT

By Zeeshan Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani investigators were grilling the Taliban's top spokesman on Wednesday, hoping to uncover his links with militant leaders and determine how he was operating in Pakistan, government and security officials said.

Pakistani security forces arrested Abdul Latif Hakimi in the southwestern province of Baluchistan on Tuesday.

He was detained with five other suspected Taliban members in a raid on a house on the outskirts of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, an intelligence official said. A satellite phone, two mobile phones and a fax machine were seized in the raid.

"He was using the fax machine to send messages from Mullah Omar and statements on Taliban activities to newspapers in Pakistan and other countries," said an intelligence official who declined to be identified.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has been in hiding since U.S.-led forces ousted his government in late 2001 for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks.

Hakimi had said in the past he had no idea of the whereabouts of bin Laden.

"We're interrogating him for his links with the Taliban high-ups and how was he operating in Pakistan," the Pakistani official said.

Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed described Hakimi's arrest as a big catch and said he hoped Hakimi would disclose information about Taliban leaders.

Pakistan would question Hakimi before deciding whether to hand him over to the United States, Ahmed said. Many al Qaeda and Taliban members arrested in Pakistan since 2001 have been turned over to U.S. authorities.

"SIGNIFICANT, SYMBOLIC CAPTURE"

The United States and Afghanistan welcomed Hakimi's arrest but there has been no word on whether Washington would seek his custody.

"We are grateful to the country of Pakistan for their successful capture of Abdul Latif Hakimi," said Colonel Jim Yonts, a U.S. military spokesman in the Afghan capital.

Khaliq Ahmad, an official in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office, said he hoped Hakimi's arrest would lead to more.

In Washington, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity called the arrest "a significant, symbolic capture."

However, he said it was not clear what impact Hakimi's arrest would have on Taliban operations.

Hakimi, the main spokesman for the Taliban in recent years, was frequently in touch with reporters, speaking by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, although Afghan and U.S. officials long suspected he was in Pakistan.

Hakimi used to vow unending jihad, or holy war, on foreign troops and often made outlandish claims on behalf of Taliban fighters, saying they had inflicted huge casualties on U.S. and Afghan government troops.

But his information was also, at times, accurate.

Hakimi last called Reuters on Monday at around 4 p.m. (1100 GMT) to deny an Afghan government report that 31 Taliban insurgents had been killed in fighting.

His arrest comes less than a month after a previous Taliban spokesman, former ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, was freed from a U.S. military prison in Cuba under an Afghan government reconciliation program.

Hakimi had welcomed Zaeef's release and said he hoped there would be more.

Source: REUTERS

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