 A suspected Taliban commander responsible for roadside bomb attacks on Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops has been arrested in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan commander said Thursday. Mullah Abdul Razak was handed over to coalition forces after being caught traveling in a taxi when troops at a checkpoint recognized his face from a list of photographs of wanted suspects, army commander Gen. Muslim Amid said. Razak is the alleged Taliban leader in Arghandab district, just north of Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan and a former rebel stronghold, he said.
| They've either caught this guy seventeen times now, or half the commanders in the Taliban have the same name... |
The suspected insurgent commander was caught Wednesday in possession of letters, threatening to kill villagers if they cooperate with President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government, he said. ``He is a key figure in the Taliban and responsible for terrorist activities,'' Amid said without elaborating. Two men named Mullah Abdul Razak held senior positions in the Taliban regime before it was ousted in 2001. One was the police chief of the capital, Kabul, while the other was the interior minister.
| The other 11,203 were run of the mill tough guys... |
Neither has been caught, but Amid said it did not appear that either was the arrested man. He said investigators were still trying to determine Razak's position in the Taliban, but it was not believed that he was in the inner circle of the group's fugitive leader Mullah Omar.
| One of the other 11,203... |
The army commander said a second suspected Taliban member was also handed over to coalition forces after being captured Wednesday just west of Kandahar as he was trying to fire rockets at the city. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said he could not comment on the individual cases of detainees, including if they had even been taken into coalition custody.
| Of course, if they're not in custody, they're not detainees, are they? |
In separate fighting, two dead suspected insurgents were shot dead in Shah Wali Kot district, just north of Kandahar, on Wednesday after attacking Afghan army troops patrolling the area, Amid said.
| Killed them twice, just to make sure. |
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