Taliban spokesman in custody

last updated 8 January 2015

Islamabad, Pakistan

Pakistani police arrested the Taliban’s spokesman in Pakistan this week. Since the 2001 fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Abdul Latif Hakimi had given interviews to foreign media by satellite phone, often making exaggerated claims of U.S. casualties. The U.S. military tolerated the propagandist, The New York Times reported, because it got valuable information by intercepting his phone calls to Taliban commanders. But in recent months he had begun giving orders to kill captives. That made him a target. “The agencies and armed forces were making all-out efforts to arrest him,”said Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao.