Taliban Envoy Zaeef in US Custody

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan is in U.S. custody after being deported from Pakistan, U.S. military officials in Kandahar, Afghanistan, said Saturday. It was not clear where Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef is being held. Zaeef, 34, was detained Thursday by Pakistani intelligence officials, his secretary said, after failing to get permission to stay in the country. He had applied for refugee status to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but that request was denied. He then applied to Pakistan for political asylum. That request was turned down and Thursday afternoon Pakistani authorities picked him up at his home. Zaeef was taken to Peshawar, on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan, and was held in what was called protective custody. He had been questioned in recent days by U.S. and Pakistani officials about the whereabouts of Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and accused terrorist and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Until Pakistan closed the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, Zaeef was the Taliban's primary spokesman, giving frequent briefings for Western reporters.

Memory jog on this guy, of just how evil he is:

"Taliban accuse U.S. of 'genocide'
October 22, 2001
Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, left, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan accused the U.S. of "genocide."

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Accusing the United States of "genocide" the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan said Monday that U.S. aircraft had bombed a hospital in the western city of Herat, killing up to 100 people.

"It is now clear that America plans on intentionally targeting the Afghan people," Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan said Monday.

He said the dead in Herat included doctors, nurses as well as patients.

Eighteen others were killed when U.S. planes struck two clinics and shops in other parts of the country, "located far from military places," he added.

Neither claim could be independently verified.

Speaking to reporters in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Zaeef said the killing of civilians was a terrorist act on par with the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

" "[The] Bush administration is annoying the souls of those killed in New York by killing innocent men, women and children in Afghanistan," he said. "In attacking our country on mere suspicions, [the] CIA and FBI have escaped their failure to find the real culprit by putting the blame squarely on Afghanistan without any evidence."

The Pentagon said it would investigate the Taliban's claims. Defiant Zaeef said 1,000 Afghans had been killed in the U.S.-led airstrikes since they began more than two weeks ago. But he added: "We are telling the Bush administration that you will never be able to break the will and determination of the Afghans," Zaeef said. "This is a nation that loves independence and faith more than its life."

"The goal is to punish the Afghan nation for having chosen an Islamic system," the envoy added. "America is using, against the Afghan people, sophisticated and destructive weapons that have never been used before in any war........"

Mullah Abul Salam Zaeef

CNN.com Taliban diplomat condemns attacks

September 12, 2001 Posted: 12:18 PM EDT (1618 GMT)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Afghanistan's Taliban ambassador to Pakistan has condemned the string of astonishing terrorist attacks on the United States. "We want to tell the American children that Afghanistan feels your pain. We hope the courts find justice," ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef said in a statement in Pakistan after America was hit by a series of attacks that have been called the worst since Pearl Harbor.

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