The government is confident that the man police arrested in Sar Hawza district of Paktika province is Zabiullah Mujahid, one of a handful of top spokesmen for the insurgent group, Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said.
“We strongly believe it’s Zabiullah. Initial investigation shows he is Zabiullah Mujahid,” Sediqi said. Afghan police have handed the man over to the Afghan intelligence service for further investigation, he said.
The name Zabiullah Mujahid however may be an alias used by several different people. A man answering to the name has been a spokesman for the Taleban for more than five years.
But though the phone number and e-mail address remain the same, reporters who have talked regularly with the spokesman have long noted that people with different voices sometimes answer his number.
Paktika, which borders Pakistan, is a hotbed of the insurgency and a stronghold of the Haqqani network, a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
A spokesman for the Paktika provincial government said there was an operation in Sar Hawza four days ago in which two people were captured. They were in a mountainous area with two motorcycles, some radio equipment and weapons, Mokhlis Afghan said.
“We are investigating. Is he Zabiullah Mujahed or not?” he said.
Meanwhile, the Taleban said that they had obtained security plans for a meeting of regional leaders and tribal powerbrokers starting in Kabul later this week. The Afghan government and NATO officials said the document was a forgery.
The Interior Ministry argued that the Taleban created a fake document to try to scare Afghans who are planning to attend the traditional Loya Jirga. The Taleban boasted in a statement e-mailed to reporters that maps and documents they have obtained will allow them to launch precision attacks on the meeting.
NATO forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings said that they do not believe it is genuine, and that a signature on the circulated document supposedly belonging to Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparotti, the deputy commander of US forces in Afghanistan, does not resemble Scaparotti’s actual signature.
Topics at the Loya Jirga are to include negotiations under way for a future US-Afghan strategic partnership agreement and efforts to reconcile with the Taleban.
In the south, a NATO service member was killed in a bomb attack on Sunday, the international military coalition said, without giving further details. At least 10 international service members have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month.
And in the east, a man captured during an operation nearly three weeks ago died in detention, the US military said.
US Central Command said in a statement that the detainee had been receiving medical care since he was taken on Oct. 25 in Kunar province. No details were given about his injuries or ailments. He had been held at a detention facility adjoining Bagram Air Field north of Kabul.
The statement said the man died Sunday morning after displaying “serious medical symptoms.” The military said all efforts were taken to save his life and his remains are being handled according to Afghan and religious customs.
An investigation has been opened into the death, a move that the US military said is normal procedure for the deaths of detainees in their care.
