NEW YORK: A former Taliban commander pleaded guilty Friday to providing weapons and other support for attacks that killed American soldiers and for key roles in the 2008 gunpoint kidnapping of a reporter for The New York Times and another journalist.
\nSpeaking through an interpreter, Hajji Najibullah entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to take hostages.
\nThe bearded Najibullah, wearing a black skull cap over his shaved head, told Judge Katherine Polk Failla that he provided material support including weapons and himself to the Taliban from 2007 to 2009, knowing that his support \u201cwould be used to attack and kill United States soldiers occupying Afghanistan.\u201d
\n\u201cAs a result of material support I provided to the Taliban, US soldiers were killed,\u201d Najibullah said.
\nHe said his material support also included his role as a Taliban commander in Afghanistan\u2019s Wardak Province, \u201cwhere the fighters under me were prepared to, and sometimes did, conduct attacks against US soldiers and their allies using suicide bombers, automatic weapons, improvised explosive devices and rocket propelled grenades.\u201d
\nNajibullah, 49, said he also participated in the hostage taking of David Rohde \u201cand his companions\u201d so demands could be made for ransom and for the release of Taliban prisoners held by the US government.
\n\u201cI created proof-of-life videos of David Rohde and his companions in which they were forced to convey the Taliban\u2019s demands,\u201d he said.
\nThe former Times reporter and Afghan journalist Tahir Ludin were abducted when they were on their way to interview a Taliban leader.
\nBoth men made a dramatic escape from a Taliban-controlled compound in Pakistan\u2019s tribal areas more than seven months after their Nov. 10, 2008, kidnapping. Their driver, Asadullah Mangal, was a third kidnapping victim. He escaped a few weeks after Ludin and Rohde.
\nRohde, a Pulitzer Prize winner who now works as senior executive editor for national security at NBC News, attended the plea proceeding.
\nAn email sent to Rohde seeking comment said he was out of the office until Monday.
\nAfter the plea, Najibullah was led from the courtroom in shackles and handcuffs by US marshals to face an Oct. 23 sentencing. Federal sentencing guidelines, as acknowledged by a plea agreement signed by Najibullah and prosecutors, recommend a life prison sentence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK: A former Taliban commander pleaded guilty Friday to providing weapons and other support for attacks that killed American soldiers and for key roles in the 2008 gunpoint kidnapping of a reporter for The New York Times and another journalist. Speaking through an interpreter, Hajji Najibullah entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80163,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80151\/revisions\/80163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}