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CBS News
26-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Ex-Taliban commander pleads guilty in killings of U.S. soldiers and kidnapping of journalists
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, Haji Najibullah, 49, entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to take hostages. "Najibullah committed his crimes in Afghanistan over 15 years ago, and now faces justice in an American courtroom," said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in a news statement. The 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 "would be used to attack and kill United States soldiers occupying Afghanistan." "As a result of material support I provided to the Taliban, U.S. soldiers were killed," Najibullah said. He said his material support also included his role as a Taliban commander in Afghanistan's Wardak Province, "where the fighters under me were prepared to, and sometimes did, conduct attacks against U.S. soldiers and their allies using suicide bombers, automatic weapons, improvised explosive devices and rocket propelled grenades." Najibullah said he also participated in the hostage taking of David Rohde "and his companions" so demands could be made for ransom and for the release of Taliban prisoners held by the U.S. government. They forced the hostages to hike across the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan, where they were detained for seven months. "I created proof-of-life videos of David Rohde and his companions in which they were forced to convey the Taliban's demands," he said. The former Times reporter and Afghan journalist Tahir Ludin were abducted when they were on their way to interview a Taliban leader. Both men made a dramatic escape from a Taliban-controlled compound in Pakistan's 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. Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize winner who now works as senior executive editor for national security at NBC News, attended the plea proceeding. "I am pleased that he admitted his guilt today and grateful to all the U.S. officials who brought him to justice," he said in an email to The Associated Press after his sentencing. "Most of all, my heart goes out to the families of the three U.S. soldiers and the Afghan translator who were killed." In June 2008, fighters under Najibullah's command ambushed and attacked a U.S. military convoy in the vicinity of Wardak Province, according to the Justice Department. Three U.S. Army soldiers: Sergeants First Class Matthew L. Hilton and Joseph A. McKay, and Sergeant Mark Palmateer, and their Afghan interpreter were killed in the attack. Several other servicemembers were also injured in the attack, the DOJ said. After the plea, Najibullah was led from the courtroom in shackles and handcuffs by U.S. 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. New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha expressed gratitude to U.S. authorities for pursuing Najibullah, and she noted the dangers journalists face worldwide. "More than 120 journalists were killed in 2024, the most on record," she said. "Journalists go to dangerous places to uncover the facts that citizens need. Governments can and should protect journalists by investigating all attacks against reporters and publicly condemning threats."
Washington Post
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Ex-Taliban commander pleads guilty in killings of US soldiers and kidnapping of journalists
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, Haji Najibullah entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to take hostages. The 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 'would be used to attack and kill United States soldiers occupying Afghanistan.' 'As a result of material support I provided to the Taliban, U.S. soldiers were killed,' Najibullah said. He said his material support also included his role as a Taliban commander in Afghanistan's Wardak Province, 'where the fighters under me were prepared to, and sometimes did, conduct attacks against U.S. soldiers and their allies using suicide bombers, automatic weapons, improvised explosive devices and rocket propelled grenades.' Najibullah, 49, said he also participated in the hostage taking of David Rohde 'and his companions' so demands could be made for ransom and for the release of Taliban prisoners held by the U.S. government. 'I created proof-of-life videos of David Rohde and his companions in which they were forced to convey the Taliban's demands,' he said. The former Times reporter and Afghan journalist Tahir Ludin were abducted when they were on their way to interview a Taliban leader. Both men made a dramatic escape from a Taliban-controlled compound in Pakistan's 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. Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize winner who now works as senior executive editor for national security at NBC News, attended the plea proceeding. 'I am pleased that he admitted his guilt today and grateful to all the U.S. officials who brought him to justice,' he said in an email to The Associated Press after his sentencing. 'Most of all, my heart goes out to the families of the three U.S. soldiers and the Afghan translator who were killed.' After the plea, Najibullah was led from the courtroom in shackles and handcuffs by U.S. 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. New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha expressed gratitude to U.S. authorities for pursuing Najibullah, and she noted the dangers journalists face worldwide. 'More than 120 journalists were killed in 2024, the most on record,' she said. 'Journalists go to dangerous places to uncover the facts that citizens need. Governments can and should protect journalists by investigating all attacks against reporters and publicly condemning threats.'
Japan Today
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
Ex-Taliban commander pleads guilty in killings of U.S. soldiers and kidnapping of journalists
By LARRY NEUMEISTER 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, Haji Najibullah entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to take hostages. The 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 'would be used to attack and kill United States soldiers occupying Afghanistan.' 'As a result of material support I provided to the Taliban, U.S. soldiers were killed,' Najibullah said. He said his material support also included his role as a Taliban commander in Afghanistan's Wardak Province, 'where the fighters under me were prepared to, and sometimes did, conduct attacks against U.S. soldiers and their allies using suicide bombers, automatic weapons, improvised explosive devices and rocket propelled grenades.' Najibullah, 49, said he also participated in the hostage taking of David Rohde "and his companions" so demands could be made for ransom and for the release of Taliban prisoners held by the U.S. government. 'I created proof-of-life videos of David Rohde and his companions in which they were forced to convey the Taliban's demands,' he said. The former Times reporter and Afghan journalist Tahir Ludin were abducted when they were on their way to interview a Taliban leader. Both men made a dramatic escape from a Taliban-controlled compound in Pakistan's 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. Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize winner who now works as senior executive editor for national security at NBC News, attended the plea proceeding. 'I am pleased that he admitted his guilt today and grateful to all the U.S. officials who brought him to justice,' he said in an email to The Associated Press after his sentencing. 'Most of all, my heart goes out to the families of the three U.S. soldiers and the Afghan translator who were killed.' After the plea, Najibullah was led from the courtroom in shackles and handcuffs by U.S. 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. New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha expressed gratitude to U.S. authorities for pursing Najibullah, and she noted the dangers journalists face worldwide. 'More than 120 journalists were killed in 2024, the most on record,' she said. "Journalists go to dangerous places to uncover the facts that citizens need. Governments can and should protect journalists by investigating all attacks against reporters and publicly condemning threats.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Taliban Leader Pleads Guilty to Taking American Journalist Hostage
Haji Najibullah once commanded more than a thousand Taliban militants who waged a ruthless insurgency against U.S. and Afghan enemies. In summer 2008, federal prosecutors say, some of those fighters attacked a U.S. military convoy, killing three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter. Three months later, Mr. Najibullah's men destroyed an Afghan border patrol outpost, an indictment said. A month after that, Mr. Najibullah's forces shot down a U.S. military helicopter, the indictment said. And then Mr. Najibullah took part in the kidnapping of an American journalist and two Afghan men and demanded millions of dollars and the freeing of Taliban prisoners as their ransom. On Friday, Mr. Najibullah entered a courtroom in Manhattan wearing tan prison garb and a dark-colored skullcap, with his wrists and ankles shackled. He then pleaded guilty to hostage-taking and providing material support for terrorism. Mr. Najibullah, who told the judge he was 'about 49,' could finish his life in prison. He is to be sentenced in October. His appearance, before Judge Katherine Polk Failla, of Federal District Court, came nearly 20 years after the actions described in an indictment. It came nearly five years after Mr. Najibullah was brought to the United States from Ukraine and arrested in the kidnapping of the American reporter, David Rohde, then of The New York Times, and nearly four years after he was charged with four counts of murder and other crimes for the 2008 attack. Addressing Judge Failla, Mr. Najibullah acknowledged that U.S. soldiers were killed as a result of his actions as a Taliban leader between 2007 and 2009, and that those soldiers and their allies had been targeted by suicide attackers and improvised explosive devices. 'I also participated in the hostage-taking of David Rohde and his companions,' Mr. Najibullah said, adding that those hostages were then 'forced to convey the Taliban's demands.' The case, stemming from America's yearslong war in Afghanistan, was heard in a civilian court thousands of miles away. Mr. Najibullah's lawyers had filed a motion arguing that he should not be prosecuted in such a setting for the 2008 killings and related acts under the Geneva Conventions, a set of rules that outlines lawful treatment of combatants and prisoners. Judge Failla denied the motion. In a letter to the court last year, prosecutors described an interview that Mr. Najibullah had given to the television channel France 24 in the fall of 2008. In the interview, Mr. Najibullah spoke about how to use a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, prosecutors wrote, stated that his men were prepared to fight the 'holy war,' and added that they were ready to 'put on a belt and blow themselves up.' The bloodiest incident described in the charges occurred in 2008, when a U.S. convoy was hit during a combat patrol about 50 miles south of Kabul. That Taliban assault killed three U.S. soldiers: Sgt. First Class Matthew L. Hilton, 37, of Livonia, Mich.; Sgt. First Class Joseph A. McKay, 51, of Cambria Heights, Queens; and Specialist Mark C. Palmateer, 38, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Their Afghan interpreter, Muhammad Fahim, 21, was also killed. Weeks later, an article in The Times described that attack, saying the soldiers died as mines and rocket-propelled grenades hit their vehicles. At least one soldier was dragged off and chopped into pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. Mr. Najibullah's fighters soon struck again in the same area, within Wardak Province. They used rocket-propelled grenades to knock a U.S. helicopter out of the sky and were quick to claim responsibility, according to the indictment, saying that the craft had been shot down by the 'mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate.' The kidnapping of Mr. Rohde, along with an Afghan journalist named Tahir Ludin and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, then followed. Mr. Rohde, who was researching a book, had been on his way to interview a Taliban commander in Logar Province, outside Kabul. According to prosecutors, that commander was Mr. Najibullah. He was among several men armed with machine guns who kidnapped the journalists and the driver, prosecutors said, and held them hostage in Pakistan. There, according to court papers, the captors forced the abductees to make calls and videos begging for help, including one in which Mr. Rohde asked for his life to be spared while a machine gun was pointed at his face. After more than seven months in captivity, Mr. Rohde and Mr. Ludin escaped from a Taliban compound in North Waziristan. They tired guards with a late-night board game session, waited for them to fall asleep and then used a scavenged piece of rope to drop down a 20-foot wall at night, the sound of their landing masked by a noisy air-conditioner. The two journalists then walked to a Pakistani militia post. Mr. Mangal did not participate in their escape, but five weeks later he, too, managed to flee. Mr. Rohde, now the senior executive editor for national security at NBC News, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
