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Top militant Abdullah Mehsud dead

Iqbal Latif - 7/28/2007

As a young man, Mehsud, now 29, fought for the Taleban against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. He lost a leg in a landmine explosion a few days before the Taleban took Kabul in September 1996. He surrendered along with several thousand fighters to the forces of Uzbek warlord, Abdul Rashid Dostum, in December 2001 in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, and was later turned over to the US military authorities.

Abdullah Mehsud was one of at least 10 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been released only to return home to fight again with the Taleban and al Qaeda.

Abdullah Mehsud was one of at least 10 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been released only to return home to fight again with the Taleban and al Qaeda.

As a young man, Mehsud, now 29, fought for the Taleban against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. He lost a leg in a landmine explosion a few days before the Taleban took Kabul in September 1996. He surrendered along with several thousand fighters to the forces of Uzbek warlord, Abdul Rashid Dostum, in December 2001 in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, and was later turned over to the US military authorities.

The law enforcement officials raided a house of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) official in district Zhob of Balochistan and captured three men for alleged links with Taliban, while militant leader Abdullah Mehsud, blew himself up to avoid arrest.

Federal Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema Tuesday confirmed Mehsud's death. He was wanted for the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in 2004, he said.

Abdullah Mehsud killed himself with a hand grenade when law enforcement officials raided house of JUI district secretary Shaikh Ayub in Ganj Mohalla in Zhob.

"Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when forces raided his hideout. Three of his accomplices were arrested for suspected links with Taliban," said Atta Mohammed, police chief of Zhob.

``Thanks be to God that our men were safe,'' he said.

The arrested men have been shifted to an unknown place for investigations, officials said.

Terror biography:

Rahimullah Yusufzai BBC correspondent in Peshawar recently wrote a piece on his terror life, some extracts are reproduced here.Mehsud studied at a government college in Peshawar before attending a seminary where he befriended Afghan Taleban members and joined their movement.

Mehsud, whose real name is Noor Alam, is a Pashtun, the same ethnic group as the Taleban and belongs to the Mehsud tribe that inhabits South Waziristan on the Afghanistan border. His long hair and daredevil nature has made him a colorful character. Since his return from Guantanamo Bay, Mehsud has become a hero to anti-US fighters active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was a comrade of another tribal militant commander, Nek Mohammad, who was killed by a Pakistani army missile in June. Mehsud sometimes rides a camel or horse while visiting his fighters in his mountainous abode. On other occasions, his men drive him in a vehicle and protect him round-the-clock. The last case emerged when two Chinese engineers working on a dam project in Pakistan's lawless Waziristan region were kidnapped. The commander of a tribal militant group, Abdullah Mehsud, 29, told reporters by satellite phone that his followers were responsible for the abductions.

Mehsud said he spent two years at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in 2002 in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taliban. At the time he was carrying a false Afghan identity card, and while in custody he maintained the fiction that he was an innocent Afghan tribesman, he said. U.S. officials never realized he was a Pakistani with deep ties to militants in both countries, he added.

"I managed to keep my Pakistani identity hidden all these years," he told Gulf News in a recent interview. Since his return to Pakistan in March, Pakistani newspapers have written lengthy accounts of Mehsud's hair and looks, and the powerful appeal to militants of his fiery denunciations of the United States. "We would fight America and its allies," he said in one interview, "until the very end."