Mar 14 2008

High Value Target Captured. Does Muhammad Rahim help lead us to anyone else?

Posted by: Neocon in Pakistan, Terrorism

(via Hot Air) Here’s some news to end your week happily on. According to the Pentagon, we have moved a high-value target to Gitmo. It had not been widely reported that Mohammad Rahim had been scooped up, but apparently we’ve had him since the summer.

[From August 2007] PESHAWAR - Al-Qaeda and Taliban have received another setback when their two important aides were arrested from different places in Pakistan, sources said Wednesday.

Muhammad Rahim was arrested few days back from Lahore while Sheikh Ilyas Khel was netted from the general bus-stand in Peshawar, the sources maintained. According to them, Rahim was Osama bin Laden’s special aide, hailing from Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, while the other had worked for Laden as translator and guide during his stay in Afghanistan.

More background on Mohammad Rahim can be found here.

“In 2001, as the terrorist haven in Afghanistan was collapsing, Rahim helped prepare Tora Bora as a hideout,” Hayden said. “When al-Qaida had to flee from there, Rahim was part of that operation, too.”

Officials allege that he sought chemicals for one attack on US forces in Afghanistan, and tried to recruit individuals with access to American military facilities there.

“While that record alone would justify Rahim’s capture, it does not fully describe his place in the terrorist infrastructure,” Hayden said. “Proficient in several languages and familiar with the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, he was also an extremist facilitator and courier with high-level contacts.”

You can bet that we got more out of him while he was officially in Pakistan’s custody, but his move to Gitmo is a testament to the value of that installation to the War on Terror. (Or was he in Hungary all that time?)

Update 7:45PM CST: Here is a much longer piece from the Long War Journal. Worth the read.