A militant commander said to be behind the kidnap of a British aid worker who was later killed in a rescue attempt has been pardoned under an amnesty deal.
Mullah Abdul Basir has agreed to give up his fight against the Afghan government and will not face charges for the kidnap that led to the 2010 death of Linda Norgrove.
Miss Norgrove spent two weeks in captivity in eastern Afghanistan after she and three local staff were taken from a car while working for the American aid contractor DAI.
The 36-year-old from Lewis in the Western Isles died in a United States special forces raid to free her. She was at first thought to have been killed when a captor detonated a suicide vest during the raid, but it was later disclosed she had been accidentally killed by a grenade thrown by one of her would-be rescuers.
Police and government officials in Kunar told the Telegraph that Mullah Basir, the militant said to have been behind the kidnap at the time, had now surrendered to the government.
Kunar police
"Mullah Abdul Basir had abducted Linda and then she was killed in a foreign forces rescue manoeuvre,” said Sediq Safi, spokesman for the Kunar police. “The reason behind Mullah Basir’s surrender was that he got tired and fed up of war and insurgency.”
The amnesty included a pardon, said a senior official with the justice ministry. Such deals are commonplace as the government tries to split commanders and fighters away from the insurgency, but they have been unable to reduce violence in the country. Many other insurgents also surrendered under the general amnesty, officials said
“Militants surrendered on an amnesty basis with an official pardon to those who have committed crimes and insurgency,” the official said. “The militants will be allowed to go to civilian life and say goodbye to anti-state activities, regardless of whether he or she committed crimes against Afghans or non-Afghans."
Kunar Police
Mullah Basir was unavailable for comment. Militant sources described him as an opportunist who had changed allegiance for money and was now a marked man who would be targeted as a “traitor”.
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The mountainous province of Kunar has been home to a patchwork of militant groups, many with links to al-Qaeda. At the time of the kidnap, Mullah Basir was said to command a 20-strong band loyal to a leader called Qari Dawat, the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa al Quran wal Sunnah (JDQ) in Kunar province. Basir had since gone on to fight for both the Taliban and latterly for Islamic State group, sources said.
“Now our gun barrels will turn on Basir, we don’t spare traitors,” said a local Taliban commander called Hedayatullah Bacha.
British and American intelligence officers hunted for Miss Norgrove as she was taken from village to village by her captors. Qari Dawat contacted Afghan journalists with three demands for her release – the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, the release of insurgent prisoners from Kunar, and the release of Aafia Sidiqqui, a Pakistani scientist held by the US military.
When Miss Norgrove was found, US forces launched the rescue mission, worried she would soon disappear over the border beyond reach into Pakistan. She was accidentally killed in the attempt by an American grenade. The inquest heard Miss Norgrove’s captors were all already dead or dying when the grenade was thrown. Local tribal elders later claimed they had been close to negotiating her release, but the British government said there had been no realistic alternative to the rescue attempt.
William Hague, then Foreign Secretary, said at the time: “Responsibility for this tragic outcome rests squarely with the hostage takers. From the moment they took her, her life was under grave threat. Given who held her, and the danger she was in, we judged that Linda’s best chance lay in attempting to rescue her."
The Foreign Office declined to comment on Mullah Basir’s pardon.
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