Afghan authorities have arrested a judge for allegedly harboring the organizers of two bombings last year that killed about 12 people, including four Americans, and believe the ringleaders took their orders from an Iraqi member of al Qaeda, a senior official said Saturday. The purported link to Osama bin Laden's network follows warnings from the U.S. military that foreign militants -- mostly believed to have found refuge in neighboring Pakistan -- were still operating in Afghanistan three years after the U.S. invasion. Gen. Abdul Fatah, a senior Afghan prosecutor, said the judge, Naqibullah, was detained about two weeks ago after two men accused of organizing an Aug. 29 car-bombing against Dyncorp Inc., a security contracting firm based in Reston, told investigators they had stayed at his house in Kabul, the capital. "He is accused of two things. First, he let the terrorists stay in his house. Second, he was aware of their activities but didn't inform anyone," Fatah said.Naqibullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name, was the head of a preliminary court in the Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul, Fatah said. U.S. military officials had no comment Saturday on the judge's arrest. But Maj. Gen. Eric Olson said in September that al-Qaeda-linked militants may have carried out the car bombing. Three Americans were among about 10 people killed in the attack on the office of Dyncorp, which provides bodyguards for President Hamid Karzai and trains Afghan police officers. Two months later, an attacker wearing a string of hand grenades blew himself up in a shopping district of capital near a group of Icelandic peacekeepers, injuring three soldiers and killing an American woman and an Afghan girl.
Intelligence officials have identified the alleged ringleader of both attacks as Mohammed Haidar, a Tajik, and said he confessed. Fatah said an accomplice, Abdul Ahad, was arrested with Haidar. Ahad and Naqibullah are from the same district of Afghanistan's Kapisa province, he said. Afghan intelligence officials also said Haidar acted on the instructions of a suspected al Qaeda member named Attaullah, who was based in Peshawar, in neighboring Pakistan. Fatah said Attaullah was an Iraqi.
| Interesting. This isn't a Taliban or Hekmatyar operation. There aren't any Pashtuns involved. Haidar's a Tadjik, and it looks like it's strictly al-Qaeda. Start of a trend? Or maybe the trend becoming visible? |