 Pakistani security forces have arrested some suspected Taliban officials in a raid in northwestern Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, police said on Tuesday. Pakistani newspaper reports quoted unnamed officials as saying Mawlavi Abdul Kabir -- a deputy of elusive Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar -- was among those arrested, but senior Pakistani officials said they were unable to confirm this. Police said "a few" suspected Taliban officials were arrested on Saturday night in a raid on an Afghan refugee camp in Akora Khattack, a town around 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
| That's that site of Sami's compound, isn't it? And Haqqaniya madrassah, mosque, and arms depot? |
"A few people have been arrested who are suspected to be Taliban but their identity has not yet been established," a senior police officer in Akora Khattack said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
| "It ain't like they're regulars around here... Nope. Nope. Not them." |
Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao and Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, contacted by Reuters, said they were unable to confirm that the group included Kabir.
| That prob'ly means that the final list won't include him. |
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said unnamed sources had confirmed Kabir's arrest, but Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi denied it. "I have also heard these reports," the agency quoted Hakimi as saying. "This morning I contacted friends and some relatives of Mawlavi Abdul Kabir and all of them denied this."
| Then his lips fell off, so he went out and cut the heads off some captured Navy SEALs... |
Hakimi said in April that Kabir was the head of the Taliban's political commission, which would make him the number two to Mullah Omar. In April, Kabir rejected as baseless reports that he had held reconciliation talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.
| "Nope. Nope. Never happened. Wudn't me." |
Kabir served as the Taliban's top military commander in the east of Afghanistan during the group's rule until late 2001.
| ... when he began drawing unemployment checks... |
According to Afghan sources, he played a big role in providing safe passage in 2001 for senior al Qaeda figures, including Osama bin Laden, who had been trapped by U.S.-led forces in the Tora Bora mountains after the Taliban's fall. |