Afghans want to try former minister

Posted 9:49AM on Sunday 10th February 2002 ( 23 years ago )

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Afghan authorities say the former Taliban foreign minister, held by the U.S. military after he reportedly gave himself up, should be put on trial to answer for crimes committed during the Islamic militia's rule. A second Taliban figure was reportedly arrested this weekend in Pakistan. The surrender of Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil has raised hopes that other Taliban leaders may turn themselves in. Muttawakil, the highest Taliban official known to be in custody, surrendered Friday to Afghan authorities in Kandahar and is being questioned at the southern city's U.S.-commandeered airfield, U.S. military officials said. Another prominent Taliban commander, Mullah Siddiqullah, was arrested by Pakistani security officials Friday at the Harkat refugee camp near Peshawar, close to the border with Afghanistan, refugees at the camp said Sunday. Siddiqullah, who has one leg and is in his 50s, was a senior official in the Irrigation Ministry. Refugees said he fled to Pakistan with his family before the Oct. 7 start of U.S. and British airstrikes that brought the Taliban down. Pakistani officials refused to confirm the arrest. As a former Cabinet minister, Muttawakil could provide information about the movements of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in the regime's final days. Both men remain at large. ``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,'' said Omar Samad, an Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman. Scoffing at Muttawakil's reputation as a Taliban moderate, Samad said the Afghan government would like to ``interrogate him for a while'' and wants him tried by U.S., Afghan or international authorities. ``What we do insist on is that he does face trial and he does face some type of justice and answer questions about his past involvement in terrorism activities and human rights violations during the Taliban regime,'' Samad said Saturday in an interview in Washington. ``These are crimes against humanity that include massacres and atrocities, and cultural crimes including destruction of artifacts.'' U.S. officials said Muttawakil surrendered to Afghan authorities, but Kandahar officials claimed to know nothing about it. Meanwhile, Kandahar province's governor said Afghans will accompany U.S. forces on some future operations to avoid a repeat of the commando raid north of Kandahar last month when U.S. troops captured the wrong people and, Afghans allege, killed other innocents too. ``To avoid any misguided military operation, we have made it a rule that in any future U.S. operation which is conducted on the basis of local Afghan intelligence, people from Kandahar administration would be included,'' Gov. Gul Agha said. He said he was visiting London when the raid occurred. ``That is why this mistake happened,'' he said. ``But it will not be done in future.'' The Pentagon first said the Jan. 23 raid was an attack on an al-Qaida weapons dump, and that troops killed about 15 people and captured 27 Taliban and al-Qaida members. But after Afghans complained that they were wrongly targeted, the U.S. military acknowledged that none of the 27 prisoners was al-Qaida or Taliban and released them. The United States says it is investigating whether any of those killed also were the wrong people. Afghans said the dead were not Taliban renegades, and instead included members of a government mission sent to disarm Taliban holdouts. Afghans who survived or witnessed the night raid said 19 people were killed, most of them where they slept, and that two others were killed by U.S. bombing. Speaking Saturday in Quetta, a Pakistani city near the border with Afghanistan, Agha said 50,000 weapons have been collected in a drive to disarm fighters in Kandahar and adjoining provinces. ``There are still some areas that need to be cleansed of arms and we are doing that,'' he said. Efforts to bring stability to northern Afghanistan also continue. In a plan reminiscent of stories about taming the American Wild West, militia factions agreed that travelers to Mazar-e-Sharif will have to leave any unauthorized weapons at checkpoints that will encircle the city, the region's largest, an official said Sunday. They will get the weapons back when they leave. The checkpoints are part of a pact by warlords to establish a 600-member security force under Afghanistan's interim government. Nearly all militiamen have withdrawn from the city and the security force is expected to take full control later this week, said Sayed Noorullah, who heads the government's foreign affairs office for northern Afghanistan. ``We hope that Mazar-e-Sharif will be empty of all armed groups other than police,'' he said. ``Anyone entering Mazar-e-Sharif will have to give up their arms at these posts ... and receive it when they return.'' Meanwhile, in a possible conciliatory gesture to the United States, Iran closed the offices of former Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister living in exile in Iran who has opposed the interim Afghan government, one of his aides said Sunday. Iranian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Washington has accused Iran of trying to destabilize Afghanistan's fledgling administration, saying Tehran gives refuge to anti-government figures or supports them in Afghanistan. Iran has denied the accusations. Iran's Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari said Wednesday that Iran was considering whether to kick out Hekmatyar and discussing the matter with Afghanistan's interim government.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/2/203099