Mullah Omar on run in Afghanistan: Hakimi
Karzai seeks Taliban spokesman’s extradition

ISLAMABAD—A detained Taliban spokesman has told his interrogators that the militia’s fugitive chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar, is hiding in Afghanistan and is in contact with top commanders, an intelligence official said Wednesday.
Mullah Hakim Latifi, who has often claimed responsibility on behalf of the Taliban for attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces, was arrested earlier this week in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said.
Latifi was not a prominent figure in the Taliban while it was in power in Afghanistan, only becoming a media contact after the ouster of the movement in a U.S.-led war in 2001. His exact ties to the Taliban leadership are not known.
“So far, he has told interrogators that Mullah Omar is alive, he is in Afghanistan and he remains in contact with senior aides by satellite phone,” said the Pakistani intelligence official, who was involved in the raid to arrest Latifi in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature of his job.
Some Pakistani officials said Latifi was arrested Tuesday, but the intelligence official said he was detained Sunday at a home in Quetta’s Newi Killi neighborhood. The announcement of Latifi’s arrest had been delayed because he was being interrogated about other Taliban leaders, the official said. Four “low-level” aides of Latifi were arrested from several other homes in Newi Killi, the official said.
Intelligence agents seized two satellite phones, two Pakistani cell phones, Taliban literature, audio cassettes and CDs containing films of Taliban operations, he said. Pakistani officials described Latifi as a Taliban spokesman. But information from Latifi in the past has sometimes proven exaggerated or untrue. Afghan and U.S. military officials say he is believed to speak for factions of the rebel group.
Afghanistan welcomed Latifi’s arrest. Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have sometimes been strained because of Kabul’s suspicions that rebels are using Pakistan as a staging area for cross-border attacks. Pakistan denies it.
Rebels are active in the volatile south and east of Afghanistan, and have stepped up attacks this year. More than 1,300 people, including hundreds of militants, have died in the past seven months. Pakistan was once a supporter of the Taliban, but withdrew its backing and became a chief ally of the U.S.-led coalition forces that ousted the militia, which refused to hand over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.
Investigators were grilling the Taliban’s top spokesman on Wednesday, hoping to uncover his links with militant leaders and determine how he was operating in Pakistan, government and security officials said.
Pakistani security forces arrested Abdul Latif Hakimi in the southwestern province of Baluchistan on Tuesday. He was detained with five other suspected Taliban members in a raid on a house on the outskirts of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, an intelligence official said. A satellite phone, two mobile phones and a fax machine were seized in the raid.
“He was using the fax machine to send messages from Mullah Omar and statements on Taliban activities to newspapers in Pakistan and other countries,” said an intelligence official who declined to be identified.
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has been in hiding since U.S.-led forces ousted his government in late 2001 for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks. Hakimi had said in the past he had no idea of the whereabouts of bin Laden.
“We’re interrogating him for his links with the Taliban high-ups and how was he operating in Pakistan,” the official said. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed described Hakimi’s arrest as a big catch and said he hoped Hakimi would disclose information about Taliban leaders.
Pakistan would question Hakimi before deciding whether to hand him over to the United States, Ahmed said. Many al Qaeda and Taliban members arrested in Pakistan since 2001 have been turned over to U.S. authorities.
The United States and Afghanistan welcomed Hakimi’s arrest but there has been no word on whether Washington would seek his custody.
“We are grateful to the country of Pakistan for their successful capture of Abdul Latif Hakimi,” said Colonel Jim Yonts, a U.S. military spokesman in the Afghan capital. Khaliq Ahmad, an official in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office, said he hoped Hakimi’s arrest would lead to more.
In Washington, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity called the arrest “a significant, symbolic capture.” However, he said it was not clear what impact Hakimi’s arrest would have on Taliban operations.
Hakimi, the main spokesman for the Taliban in recent years, was frequently in touch with reporters, speaking by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, although Afghan and U.S. officials long suspected he was in Pakistan.
Hakimi used to vow unending jihad, or holy war, on foreign troops and often made outlandish claims on behalf of Taliban fighters, saying they had inflicted huge casualties on U.S. and Afghan government troops. But his information was also, at times, accurate.
Hakimi last called Reuters on Monday at around 4 p.m. (1100 GMT) to deny an Afghan government report that 31 Taliban insurgents had been killed in fighting. His arrest comes less than a month after a previous Taliban spokesman, former ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, was freed from a U.S. military prison in Cuba under an Afghan government reconciliation program. Hakimi had welcomed Zaeef’s release and said he hoped there would be more.—Agencies