The Afghan government announced on Thursday it had arrested the Taliban movement’s main spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, but a man believed to be the militants’ mouthpiece denied he had been captured. The interior ministry said Ahmadi was seized with his brother on Wednesday in the volatile southern province of Helmand where the Taliban are in control of several districts. They were arrested by police near the provincial capital Lashkar Gah with motorcycles and a gun, as well as a satellite and a mobile telephone, a ministry statement said. “One of the men himself confessed that, ‘I am Mawlawi Mohammad Qasim working under the pseudonym Qari Yousuf Ahmadi. I am the Taliban spokesman and military commander,’” Helmand police chief Mohammad Hossain Andiwal told AFP.