KABUL, 17 July 2005 — Suspected Taleban insurgents in southern Afghanistan kidnapped and hanged a tribal elder in the latest attack against tribal chiefs linked to the US-backed government, police said yesterday. Tribal elder Malik Agha in Attaghar district of Zabul province was seized by armed men early Friday as he went to the mosque for morning prayers, Attaghar district police chief Ghul Habibi told AFP.
“He was a strong supporter of President Hamid Karzai’s government and he was against the Taleban movement,” the police chief said. Dozens of prominent supporters of Karzai’s US-backed administration have been killed along with more than 700 others in an upsurge in violence since March. US and Afghan officials have warned that the violence is likely to worsen in the lead-up to legislative elections set for September. On Friday, Taleban raided a police post in the country’s south and an ensuing gunbattle left seven officers and five attackers dead.
“They took him to neighboring Zawana district and hanged him,” Habibi said. Agha was a tribal elder and sat on the local council but had served as district police chief in the past, he added. Taleban spokesman Mulla Abdul Latif Hakimi said Agha had been killed for spying for the Americans. “We hung Malik Agha for being a spy and we arrested five of his bodyguards who will be tried and possibly killed later today,” he told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location.
Four mullah have been assassinated by the Taleban in a spate of attacks in the last two months in southern Afghanistan and 21 people were killed by a suicide bomber in Kandahar on June 1 at the funeral of a pro-government cleric.
Separately, the US military yesterday released another batch of 20 Afghan prisoners from its main detention center, where four Al-Qaeda-linked Arab militants escaped last week, US military spokeswoman Sgt. Marina Evans said. The release was the fourth under a government scheme to promote national reconciliation with the ousted Taleban regime and brought the number of freed prisoners this month to 210, said government official Mohammad Akram.
Some 133 detainees have been released from Bagram, the main American base in Afghanistan, an hour’s drive north of the capital, Kabul, over the past two weeks. Another 46 are to be released shortly, Evans said. The latest releases came as US and Afghan forces continued to search for four suspected Arab terrorists who escaped from the fortress-like prison last Monday.
Some of the released prisoners said they were amazed to hear that there had been a breakout. “I can’t imagine how those four escaped. It is not possible to escape from Bagram,” said Zain Nuddin, from southern Kandahar province who was detained for 11 months after being suspected of having links to the Taleban. “Every three days, we are only allowed out to exercise for 25 minutes and there are always so many American soldiers with guns watching us.”
The escape “amazed me. It’s impossible to escape that jail,” said Mohammad Nasim, 20, who was one of the prisoners released yesterday. Another prisoner Sher Agha said, “I don’t know how they could escape. There were lots of American soldiers guarding the jail, they were everywhere.” Agha said that following the Arabs’ escape, security in his separate section for Afghan prisoners was further tightened.
A Taleban commander wanted by US and Afghan forces surrendered Friday under the same scheme. The man identified as Mulla Gulshah Wazir, locally known as Mulla Tiktar, gave himself up in the restive eastern province of Khost near the Pakistani border, counterterrorism police commander Ghafar Khan told reporters.
“He was a very active Taleban member, so it will reduce the level of Taleban activities here,” he said. Provincial intelligence head Sadik Tarakhil confirmed the surrender, saying Wazir had been active in launching attacks against US and Afghan troops.
