Americans Question Ex-Taliban Official
Feb. 9, 2002 -- The former foreign minister of the Taliban, who surrendered to U.S. custody Friday, is being questioned at a U.S. military base today, officials said.
As interrogators questioned Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil at the American base at the Kandahar, Afghanistan airport, bad weather today was hampering a team of U.S. soldiers trying to find out whether other senior Taliban or al Qaeda leaders died in an attack by a CIA spy drone in a remote area of Afghanistan.
Muttawakil surrendered Friday to local officials in Kandahar, The Associated Press reported. Though he was considered a relative moderate when he was the Taliban's foreign minister, Muttawakil still was among the U.S.'s most-wanted members of the fundamentalist Islamic regime.
U.S. forces also took custody of another Taliban official Friday. Officials would not reveal his identity except to say he was the Taliban's former northern intelligence chief, and military and intelligence sources said he was not on the United States' top 25 most wanted list.
U.S. officials are hopeful Muttawakil will provide them with important intelligence about Osama bin Laden, who the United States calls the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America, and former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who the U.S. accused of sheltering bin Laden. Both men have eluded capture since the United States began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7.
Officials of the interim Afghan government said they, too, hope to question Muttawakil, and they applauded his capture. Afghanistan's current foreign minister said he hoped it would serve as a message to other Taliban leaders that they can't escape justice.
"They should face justice," Abdullah Abdullah said. "They should be tried — here in Afghanistan, in an international tribunal or in the United States. That will not make a big difference."
The only other major Taliban official in U.S. custody is Abdul Salam Zaeef, their former ambassador to Pakistan. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities in January, and turned over to U.S. officials. The kidnappers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl have named Zaeef's release as one of their demands.
Missile Attack
Meanwhile, in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. investigators still don't know who was killed when remote operators of an unmanned spy drone on Monday fired two Hellfire missiles at a group of men believed to be high-ranking members of bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Bad weather again was delaying the investigation, after U.S. soldiers finally were dropped off in the area Friday, a defense official told The Associated Press. Four previous days of bad weather had caused prior delays.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a Penatgon briefing Friday that more than 50 personnel arrived to "exploit any intelligence that can be gathered at the site" near Zawar Kili.
On Monday, a remote-controlled Predator spy-plane fired at a group of heavily-guarded men standing next to a truck.
Because of their mode of transport, the presence of heavy security, and the fact that the men were in Arab-style dress, U.S. officials believe the men were members of Osama bin Laden's Arab-dominated organization.
Because one of the men was unusually tall, there was also some speculation that bin Laden himself may have been killed. Bin Laden is believed to be about 6 feet 4 inches tall.
But at Friday's Pentagon briefing, Myers and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said they did not know if bin Laden had been one of the targets in the attack.
"The strike was on some individuals. Who is to be determined," Myers said. "That's what they're gathering the intelligence on."
Wazir Khan, a brother of regional warlord Bacha Khan, told The Associated Press seven people were killed in the attack, but Osama bin Laden "is not among those people."
It was unclear if the team at the site now included forensics specialists who could help determine who was killed, but Myers said the team may have to bring evidence back to U.S. bases for further examination.
Prisoner Release
As the United States continues to seek out top leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban, Afghanistan's interim government is showing some mercy to lower level Taliban fighters. Around 300 of them were released today in a ceremony at the presidential palace in Kabul today.
"We decided sometime back that we will begin to release everybody, those who were not found with any bad record or links with terrorists and all that," Interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai said. "So that just the common people, we just let them go home."
Musharraf to Washington
In other developments:
As Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf flies to meet with President Bush in Washington this weekend, his government announced it would provide more help to U.S. troops in Pakistan. Pakistan will provide food, fuel, water, communications and medical services to American troops stationed there. President Musharraf is traveling to Washington to discuss future American-Pakistan cooperation.
A planeload of 28 Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday, where they joined some 150 prisoners being held in a temporary detention facility. Rumsfeld said Friday that detainees there have provided some "important information" that may have helped to prevent terrorist attacks. Following recent international protests over the United States' treatment of the detainees, President Bush has announced that the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war would apply to captured Taliban members, but not al Qaeda fighters. But speaking at a news briefing in Washington on Thursday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stressed that neither Taliban nor al Qaeda prisoners would qualify as prisoners of war.
The official count of those killed at the World Trade Center is down to 2,843, after months of double-checking and confirmations by investigators. The number once topped 6,700.
ABCNEWS' Martha Raddatz and Brian Hartman at the Pentagon contributed to this report.