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Sunday, October 02, 2011

Kabul blames ISI for Rabbani’s killing

KABUL: Afghanistan’s intelligence agency said on Saturday that it had handed Pakistan evidence that the Taliban’s leadership plotted the recent assassination of ex-president and government peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani allegedly on the Pakistani soil. The interior minister, giving testimony in parliament, also said that a mastermind of the plot - Hameedullah Akhondzada - had been arrested. The minister said that the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a role in the killing. Rabbani, who was head of the High Peace Council charged with trying to reach a negotiated settlement to the war, was killed at his Kabul home by a suicide bomber claiming to be carrying a message of peace from the Taliban leadership. “Without any doubt ISI hand has been involved,” Interior Minister Bismillah Mohammadi told lawmakers on Saturday, while discussing Rabbani’s killing. “We have detained Hameedullah Akhondzada who confessed that it was nothing but a plot,” he added. Mohammadi said a fact-finding mission was leaving for Pakistan on Saturday to investigate further, and Islamabad had been given a list of those involved. Akhondzada has been named by the Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) but it has given no details of his identity. Acting NDS chief Rahmatullah Nabeel also said that Akhondzada had been detained, but gave no details. Rabbani’s killing was seen as a heavy blow to hopes of peace talks and has brought fears of worsening ethnic rifts among Afghans fighting the Taliban-led insurgency. reuters

Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk

 

 

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