Authorities were interrogating a top Taliban commander on Tuesday, a day after he was wounded and arrested in a shootout with security forces, police said.Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, a leader of the insurgency against NATO and US-led forces in southern Afghanistan and brother of the Taliban’s slain military chieftain, was captured in a town near the Pak-Afghan border on Monday. “We have handed Dadullah over to the security agencies. He is under interrogation and details will be known later,” Saud Gohar, the police chief of Balochistan, told AFP.
The army and Interior Ministry have also confirmed Dadullah’s arrest in the remote Qila Saifullah district. Gohar said that Dadullah had narrowly evaded capture in another shootout in January that left two militants dead. “The incident took place in the same district about three weeks ago. Police flagged a car but it did not stop and the occupants opened fire,” the police chief said. “They escaped into an orchard and the exchange of fire lasted half an hour. Two of his guards were killed but Dadullah managed to flee,” he added.
No terrorists: “Since then we continued to collect information from different sources and finally, we captured him alive yesterday. Dadullah’s arrest reflects our resolve that we will not allow terrorists on our soil.”
Dadullah had succeeded his elder brother — the Talibann’s overall military commander Mullah Dadullah — who was killed in a joint Afghan-NATO operation in southern Afghanistan in May 2007.. The Taliban said in late December that they had sacked Mansoor Dadullah because he disobeyed orders. But a spokesman for the commander denied that he was fired, leading to speculation about infighting among the rebels.