The Pakistan government has freed two brothers of a former member of the Taliban leadership council as part of a prisoner exchange agreement with militants in the troubled Waziristan tribal region. A Peshawar-based intelligence official confided to Pajhwok Afghan News on Sunday that Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Usmani's brothers, Abdul Wafa and Abdul Qadeer, walked out of the infamous Dera Ismail Khan prison last night. The two had been arrested in 2005 from Zhob town of the southeastern Balochistan province on the charge of having links to al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists.
They were released under a swap deal reached between the government and local Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud.
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Mullah Usmani, a close confidant of Mullah Muhammad Omar, had been the Kandahar corps commander and Balkh police chief during the Taliban regime. He was also a member of the Taliban leadership council before being