PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistan has arrested a former spokesman for Taleban leader Mullah Omar who was released by Afghanistan in 2007 in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, officials said yesterday.
Authorities detained Ustad Mohammed Yasir in the northwest city of Peshawar near the Afghan border, said an intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. A Peshawar police official confirmed the arrest, but neither specified when it occurred.
Many Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants fled into Pakistan after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taleban in 2001. The US has pushed Pakistan to crack down on the militants, who have regrouped in the country’s lawless tribal areas and have been launching attacks against Western forces across the border in Afghanistan.
Yasir served as Omar’s spokesman following the fall of the regime, said the intelligence official. Pakistan first arrested the former spokesman in 2005 and sent him to Afghanistan, where he was released along with four other Taleban figures for journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo.
Yasir was the former political assistant to Abdur Rab Rasool Sayyaf, chief of the Ittehad-e-Islami rebel group that battled the decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But he switched sides to join the Taleban when Sayyaf formed an alliance with the US-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. A Pakistani official said Yasir’s real name was Ustad Zumarck.
The Afghan and Italian governments were heavily criticized for the swap — a step many observers feared would encourage more kidnappings.
The Pakistani government also has faced a low-level insurgency in the southwest province of Balochistan, where militant tribesmen accuse the national government of ignoring the region’s development needs while pocketing revenue from the region’s natural gas reserves.
— With input from agencies
