Pakistan has arrested a purported number 3 senior figure in the Taleban militia near the border with Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday. An intelligence official said Ustad Mohammed Yasir was arrested last week along with another man near the northwestern town of Nowshera. Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao confirmed the arrest but did not give any details.
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The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature of his job, said Yasir had been a spokesman for fugitive Taleban supreme leader Mullah Omar after the ouster of the hardline regime in late 2001. However, Yasir was not a ranking Taleban member during its rule, although he had served on a prominent council of Islamic clerics at that time.
The intelligence official said that Yasir, in his 50s, was previously a close aide of an Afghan Islamist faction leader, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, but joined the Taleban rebels after Sayyaf decided to back U.S.-supported Afghan President Hamid Karzai. |