Captured Taliban says Mullah Omar in Pakistan: Afghan intelligence
KABUL (updated on: January 17, 2007, 17:45 PST): Afghan intelligence officials said on Wednesday a captured Taliban spokesman had said the movement's fugitive leader is hiding out in Pakistan with the protection of that country's spy agency.
Abul Haq Haqiq, who was known to the media as Mohammad Hanif, was arrested in the eastern province of Nangarhar late Monday.
During interrogation he said fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head, was in the western Pakistan city of Quetta, the Afghan intelligence agency said in a statement.
"He is under the protection of the ISI in Quetta," it quoted Hanif as saying. ISI is Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Haqiq was not presented to the media for questioning and the authenticity of the claims could not be verified.
The Afghan intelligence agency, called the National Directorate of Security, said the 26-year-old Haqiq had also said the regular suicide attacks in Afghanistan were plotted in a madrassa (religious school) in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal area.
He also claimed former ISI chief Hamid Gul had financed the attacks and showed propaganda videos against the foreign forces in Afghanistan, the NDS statement said.
Hanif is being held in the eastern city of Jalalabad, near where he was arrested.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have accused each other of sheltering the leaders of the Taliban insurgency and their allies in the al Qaeda terror network.
