Associated Press
WASHINGTON – At least two senior Taliban officials are in U.S. custody, defense officials said Wednesday as the search for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders continued in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said interrogations of Osama bin Laden loyalists captured in Pakistan in the past two days should yield a “treasure trove” of intelligence leads for the U.S. campaign to track down bin Laden and eradicate his al-Qaida terrorist network.
Defense officials said two senior Taliban officials are among five prisoners held aboard the USS Peleliu, a Navy ship off the coast of Pakistan. Of the other three, one is an American who fought with the Taliban, one is an Australian associated with the Taliban and one is a Saudi Arabian official of a humanitarian organization accused of having terrorist ties.
The officials did not know the names of the two Taliban officials or their positions within the militia that ruled Afghanistan for five years until its collapse this month. The two apparently were captured in northern Afghanistan by the northern alliance of anti-Taliban forces, one official said.
At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld made no direct reference to the two Taliban officials, but when asked about the status of top Taliban figures, said, “We’ve got some of them.” He did not say who they are or how many there are. The Taliban official most wanted by the United States is Mullah Mohammed Omar, the supreme Taliban leader who disappeared when Kandahar fell in early December.
Twenty prisoners so far have been handed over to the United States. Fifteen prisoners from the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-e-Sharif were turned over Tuesday to U.S. Marines at a newly created jail in Kandahar, where FBI agents familiar with the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks arrived to help with questioning.
From among thousands held by Afghan opposition forces, the 15 were picked “because we concluded, in conjunction with people holding them, that these were people who might have important information and might be themselves senior people,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
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