Posted on 03/10/2003 12:00:49 AM PST by kcvl
Afghan trio released
By Janullah Hashimzada
March 10, 2003
AMERICAN forces have released three Afghans after questioning them at a US detention facility in Afghanistan about al-Qaeda's fugitive chief, Osama bin Laden, and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an official said.
The three men, a former Afghan security official and two local Taliban leaders, were freed on Saturday, said Inayat Jamil, an official in the office of governor of Kunar, Afghanistan's eastern province.
After their release, a US helicopter flew the Afghans to Asadabad, Kunar's capital, from Bagram, the headquarters for US military in Afghanistan, just north of capital Kabul.
One of the freed men, Saif-ur Rahman, was a border security official in Kunar before he was arrested late last December in the province, said Jamil.
The two Taliban, said to have been low ranking leaders in the vanquished militia in Nuristan region of Kunar province, were not immediately identified.
ALBAWABA.com - The Middle East Gateway: "FORMER TALIBAN DIPLOMAT: BIN LADEN NARROWLY ESCAPES DETENTION" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "According to The News, Naseer Ahmed Roohi, a former official in Afghanistan's fallen government, said he had information from reliable sources al Qaeda leader had been in the Siakoh mountain range straddling the southwestern Afghan provinces of Nimroz, Helmand and Pakistan's Baluchistan province.") (March 9, 2003) (Read More...)
stepping back in time...KnowxStudio.com (RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER): "AN AL QAEDA OPERATIVE AT FORT BRAGG" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "FORT BRAGG, N.C. - A former sergeant at Fort Bragg who became a close adviser to Osama bin Laden obtained sensitive documents describing how U.S. special operations units function. Ali A. Mohamed, a trusted trainer in bin Laden's al Qaeda network, walked the halls of the U.S. military's top warfare planning center at Fort Bragg for more than two years as an Army sergeant. From 1987 to 1989, he acquired sensitive documents describing how special operations units work and a detailed plan for a special operations training exercise, court documents say. The exercise was for an attack on Baluchistan, a part of Pakistan wedged between Afghanistan and the Arabian Sea. From 1981 until his arrest in 1998, Mohamed was a key member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and he belonged to al Qaeda through the 1990s. He is in prison in an undisclosed location awaiting sentencing for his role in planning the 1998 car bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, which killed 224 people and injured 4,500. Among those who served at The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School while Mohamed was there, there is disagreement over the quantity of the documents he obtained and over the extent to which that information may compromise the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. But court files make clear that Mohamed did obtain numerous documents from Fort Bragg, including some labeled "top secret." In 1990, the FBI found Army documents that Mohamed gave to an Islamic extremist later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy. Included were top-secret documents identified as belonging to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander in Chief of the Army's Central Command, according to an FBI inventory.") (November 13, 2001)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service) (Read More...)
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