Top rebel arrested in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — International peacekeepers refused to reveal the identity of a suspected senior rebel commander arrested in a raid in the capital earlier this week, but insisted yesterday that his capture removed an imminent threat to Afghan peace.

Afghan intelligence agents, backed by 100 Canadian peacekeepers, nabbed the man in Kabul along with five others in an early morning raid Tuesday.

Cmdr. Chris Henderson, a spokesman for the peacekeepers, called the International Security Assistance Force, said the man was believed to be a key commander in the army of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The warlord’s Hezb-e-Islami group has teamed with al Qaeda and Taliban holdouts in frequent attacks on the U.S.-led coalition.

The suspect “was deemed to be an imminent threat to the people of Kabul, international aid workers” and personnel from the United Nations and the peacekeeping contingent, Cmdr. Henderson said. “That threat has now been removed from the streets of Kabul.”

Cmdr. Henderson, however, refused to name the suspect or give any details of his role within Hekmatyar’s organization, or say what plans he may have had for future attacks. The commander said such information is withheld for tactical reasons.

“Suffice to say that he is suspected to be senior … but it is important to us that we don’t reveal all the details that we learn when a raid like this occurs,” he said. “The intention is for us to keep to ourselves information that we can then use to further our investigations and to get to the bottom of these organizations and get the main leaders.”

Afghan security personnel also would not immediately comment on the man’s identity.

Meanwhile yesterday, a regional Afghan official said suspected Taliban gunmen killed seven persons on a road in the southeastern Paktika province.

Mohammed Ghaus said the gunmen stopped the car Sunday and accused the occupants of cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition. They allowed several women and young children to escape, and then shot six men and a 13-year-old boy.

U.S. officials have so far come up empty in their efforts to find Hekmatyar, a one-time Afghan prime minister and U.S. ally. Hekmatyar, Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and al Qaeda chiefs Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri all are still at large and believed hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan, despite a 21/2 year manhunt.

On Sunday, Hekmatyar issued a statement obtained by the Associated Press in which he urged his compatriots to rise up against the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. He also welcomed the uprising in Iraq by supporters of the Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Afghans “like Iraqi mujahedeen, will choose the way of uprising against the occupiers,” he said in the Pashtu-language.