Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)
May 3, 2008 By Associated Press
NEW YORK — An Afghan tribal chief facing heroin smuggling charges in New York tried to improve his lot after his arrest by giving investigators information about the whereabouts of the supreme leader of the Taliban, the government said in court papers.
Bashir Noorzai, chief of the million-member Noorzai Tribe, was arrested in April 2005 after federal authorities lured him to the U.S. with a false promise of safe passage.
In a document dated Thursday, prosecutors said that during his initial months in captivity, Noorzai considered cooperating with U.S. authorities and offered information about his connections to Taliban leaders including Mullah Mohammad Omar, who was Afghanistan's head of state before the U.S. invasion in 2001.
Noorzai told investigators that the one-eyed Taliban leader moved daily in the mountains in 2005 to evade detection and communicated in coded language. He also said Omar traveled with four or five people and sent messages to the Taliban through a brother-in-law, group commander Mullah Azizullah.
Noorzai is scheduled for trial in two weeks on charges that he brought $50 million worth of heroin into the U.S. with Taliban support.
He was arrested after he agreed to travel to the U.S. to provide the government with information on heroin trafficking, its relationship to terrorism, and the movement of money in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. Federal authorities promised him safe passage, only to arrest him anyway.
A judge ruled that the arrest of a man on the list of most wanted drug kingpins was fair because he was repeatedly read his rights.
An indictment charged Noorzai and his organization with providing weapons and manpower to the Taliban between 1990 and 2004 in exchange for protection of his opium crops, heroin laboratories and drug transportation routes.
Prosecutors said that after he was arrested, Noorzai gave information about his own family's involvement with opium and talked about his links with the Taliban.
In interviews with the government, Noorzai said he got some of his latest information about Omar's whereabouts during a February 2005 conversation with Azizullah, after he spotted him walking by the side of the road in Quetta, Pakistan.
Noorzai said he was told that Omar's messages were recorded on cassette tapes or written in letters. At other times, Omar communicated with Azizullah through coded telephone conversations, prosecutors wrote.
Noorzai also told prosecutors that Omar has four wives and that he may be hiding with one wife, the government said.
Afghan authorities say Azizullah was killed along with 14 others in early 2007 by NATO and Afghan forces in a battle with suspected Taliban militants in southern Afghan mountains.
Prosecutors said Noorzai told them he last saw Omar in person four or five months prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, when the two talked about a land dispute.
Noorzai also told investigators that he knew all four members of the Taliban economic counsel and that they held meetings freely in Pakistan, where 80 percent of the Taliban leaders maintain safe refuge, the government said.
Noorzai said he believes the Khogyanai Tribe was protecting Osama bin Laden. Noorzai said he had encountered bin Laden only once, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when he passed in a motorcade.
Noorzai's lawyer, Ivan Stephan Fisher, said he did not want to comment so close to trial. He said he was concentrating on the "very difficult task of getting a fair jury in a case like this with a Muslim defendant who comes from Afghanistan."
May 3, 2008 By Associated Press
NEW YORK — An Afghan tribal chief facing heroin smuggling charges in New York tried to improve his lot after his arrest by giving investigators information about the whereabouts of the supreme leader of the Taliban, the government said in court papers.
Bashir Noorzai, chief of the million-member Noorzai Tribe, was arrested in April 2005 after federal authorities lured him to the U.S. with a false promise of safe passage.
In a document dated Thursday, prosecutors said that during his initial months in captivity, Noorzai considered cooperating with U.S. authorities and offered information about his connections to Taliban leaders including Mullah Mohammad Omar, who was Afghanistan's head of state before the U.S. invasion in 2001.
Noorzai told investigators that the one-eyed Taliban leader moved daily in the mountains in 2005 to evade detection and communicated in coded language. He also said Omar traveled with four or five people and sent messages to the Taliban through a brother-in-law, group commander Mullah Azizullah.
Noorzai is scheduled for trial in two weeks on charges that he brought $50 million worth of heroin into the U.S. with Taliban support.
He was arrested after he agreed to travel to the U.S. to provide the government with information on heroin trafficking, its relationship to terrorism, and the movement of money in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. Federal authorities promised him safe passage, only to arrest him anyway.
A judge ruled that the arrest of a man on the list of most wanted drug kingpins was fair because he was repeatedly read his rights.
An indictment charged Noorzai and his organization with providing weapons and manpower to the Taliban between 1990 and 2004 in exchange for protection of his opium crops, heroin laboratories and drug transportation routes.
Prosecutors said that after he was arrested, Noorzai gave information about his own family's involvement with opium and talked about his links with the Taliban.
In interviews with the government, Noorzai said he got some of his latest information about Omar's whereabouts during a February 2005 conversation with Azizullah, after he spotted him walking by the side of the road in Quetta, Pakistan.
Noorzai said he was told that Omar's messages were recorded on cassette tapes or written in letters. At other times, Omar communicated with Azizullah through coded telephone conversations, prosecutors wrote.
Noorzai also told prosecutors that Omar has four wives and that he may be hiding with one wife, the government said.
Afghan authorities say Azizullah was killed along with 14 others in early 2007 by NATO and Afghan forces in a battle with suspected Taliban militants in southern Afghan mountains.
Prosecutors said Noorzai told them he last saw Omar in person four or five months prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, when the two talked about a land dispute.
Noorzai also told investigators that he knew all four members of the Taliban economic counsel and that they held meetings freely in Pakistan, where 80 percent of the Taliban leaders maintain safe refuge, the government said.
Noorzai said he believes the Khogyanai Tribe was protecting Osama bin Laden. Noorzai said he had encountered bin Laden only once, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when he passed in a motorcade.
Noorzai's lawyer, Ivan Stephan Fisher, said he did not want to comment so close to trial. He said he was concentrating on the "very difficult task of getting a fair jury in a case like this with a Muslim defendant who comes from Afghanistan."