Afghan authorities speak with Mulla Omar

7-8-2004

KABUL: 

Afghan intelligence agents have spoken with Taliban leader Mulla Muhammad Omar after commandeering a satellite phone being used by his top aide, an Afghan official claimed on Thursday.

A man believed to be Omar’s aide, Mulla Sakhi Dad Mujahid, was captured on Tuesday, while carrying a satellite telephone containing the phone numbers of top members of the ousted regime, Kandahar intelligence chief Abdullah Laghmanai told AFP. "We contacted Mulla Omar by Mulla Mujahid’s phone," he said.

At first Mujahid was forced to talk to his boss on the phone. "Salam-Alaikum, where are you," Omar asked Mujahid, according to Laghmanai, who did not say when the call was made. "But when he (Omar) realised the situation ... he cut off the phone," he said.

Mujahid, who served as Omar’s secretary under the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule Mulla Mujahid, was arrested on Tuesday during a raid in Dara-e-Noor, some 70 kilometres north of Kandahar. "Currently he was serving as Omar’s military assistant," Laghmanai said.

Kandahar military spokesman General Abdul Wasay confirmed the arrest. "The arrest of Mulla Mujahid will pacify Taliban’s activities in the area," where he was captured, he told AFP, without elaborating on further details.

Laghmanai said that subsequent efforts to contact Omar on the phone had been unsuccessful as the Taliban boss refuses to answer phone calls from strange numbers. "Maybe Omar has found out that his friend is under our control," he said. "He doesn’t answer his telephone."

Mujahid was transferred on Wednesday in handcuffs to Kabul for further investigations, which authorities hope could lead to the arrest of other militants, including Omar. "Once the investigation is done, we hope to capture Omar, if not, at least we would get close to capturing him," an intelligence official preparing to carry out the interrogation in Kabul said.

"He has been just brought to Kabul - we will start investigating him very soon," the official, who asked to not be named, told AFP. The official, himself involved in the anti-Taliban fight between 1996 and 2001, confirmed that Mujahid was a "big Taliban member". Laghmanai claimed that intelligence reports and information received from Mujahid suggested that Omar was hiding in Pakistani areas near Kandahar and close to Quetta.

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