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Taliban
Foreign Minister Muttawakil Surrenders To US Forces
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Authorities believe Mutawakel may yield valuable information
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WASHINGTON,
Feb. 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The foreign minister of
Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban movement surrendered himself Friday in the
southern city of Kandhar and was then turned over to U.S. forces there.
Mulla
Abdul Wakil Muttawakil is the highest-ranking member of the Taliban taken into
custody so far, and authorities believe he may yield valuable information,
including the whereabouts of Mulla Mohammed Omar and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden.
"We
can confirm that the Taliban foreign minister did turn himself in earlier today
[Friday] at Kandahar," said Maj. Brad Lowell, spokesman for Central Command
in Florida. "He's under the control of U.S. troops in Kandhar. As we've
done with people that have turned themselves in, we will question him. If we
take any detainees we would hope to get some information."
Earlier
on Friday 8, 2002, a U.S. official who did not want to be named said the
minister handed himself over to the mayor of Kandhar.
"This
is a moment that we have been waiting for - to make sure that these individuals
face trial, either in Afghanistan or outside Afghanistan, for their actions and
deeds in the past," Omar Samad, a spokesman for the Afghan Foreign
Ministry, said in an interview Saturday. "It's about time that a known
Taliban figure who held a position of authority is turning himself in, and
hopefully others will be caught later."
Officials
said U.S. authorities were questioning Muttawakil at their base near Kandhar. It
is not known whether he will be transferred with other high-ranking Taliban and
Al-Qaeda members being detained at "Camp X-Ray" at the U.S. Naval Base
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Before
Muttawakil turned himself in, the highest-ranking Taliban official in custody
was the former army chief of staff, Mulla Fazel Mazloom. He is among the 186
prisoners being confined in outdoor cells in Cuba.
“Authorities
have questioned about 105 of the 186 prisoners at Guantanamo,” said U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He added that interrogations of Taliban
members, recently designated by Washington as prisoners of war, will continue in
hope of gleaning information that could pre-empt any future attacks by Al-Qaeda.
Rumsfeld
complained of "isolated pockets of international hyperventilation"
over U.S. handling of the prisoners. He referred to critics who reacted strongly
to an official Defense Department photograph of newly arrived prisoners kneeling
on the ground and wearing earmuffs and blacked-out goggles.
"The
newspaper headlines that yelled, 'Torture! What's next? Electrodes?' and all of
this rubbish [were] so inexcusable that it does make one wonder why we put out
any photographs, if that's the way they're going to be treated, so
irresponsibly," he said.
Rumsfeld
added that he was not considering any new restrictions on news coverage of the
detention camp.
Muttawakil
was considered one of the Taliban's more moderate figures. In the weeks after
Sept. 11, his name was mentioned as someone who might be acceptable to
Afghanistan's majority Pashtuns to provide an alternative leadership to the
Taliban.
There
were reports that he and Mohammed Omar had argued about the presence of Bin
Laden in Afghanistan. Some reports said Muttawakil had been jailed in the last
months of Taliban rule for trying to press for Bin Laden to be handed over.
But
Muttawakil stuck with the Taliban in public, challenging the United States and
Britain in October to send in ground troops. "Let them come here in the
ground," he said. "We will fight and let's see who will win.''
Officials
are hoping that Muttawakil's surrender could prompt other Taliban leaders to
give up as well.
Meanwhile,
more than 50 U.S. soldiers arrived at a remote spot in eastern Afghanistan's
mountains Friday to determine who was killed in a CIA missile attack Monday,
said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A
remote-controlled Predator spy plane fired at "some individuals," but
officials do not know for sure if they were Al-Qaeda members, Myers said. The
people were gathered near a truck in the area of Zawar Kili, a former Al-Qaeda
stronghold near the border with Pakistan, he said.
Rumsfeld
discounted speculation that Bin Laden might have been among those killed.
"We just simply have no idea," he said.
The
United States ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan for protecting Bin Laden, who
is accused of being the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks on New York's
World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. which killed about
3,000 people.
The whereabouts of Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mulla Mohammed Omar remain a
mystery, despite the rout of their forces in the campaign that began in October.
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