Pakistani security agencies on Saturday arrested a senior Afghan Taleban official who had been released from prison in Afghanistan in 2007 in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, intelligence officials said. Ustad Yasar, who headed a Taleban information wing, was arrested in Peshawar, they said. “Our security forces raided a house on a tip-off and arrested Ustad Yasar,” said an intelligence official who declined to be identified. The official said Yasar had been detained because he was a militant commander and involved in Taleban activities. Yasar was among several Taleban leaders released by the Afghan government in March 2007 in exchange for kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a Taleban spokesman said at the time. Another Pakistani security official said Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had sent Yasar to mediate in a dispute between Taleban factions in northwest Pakistan. Yasar was first arrested in Pakistan in 2005 and handed over to the Afghan government. Yasir was the former political assistant to Abdur Rab Rasool Sayyaf, chief of the Ittehad-i-Islami rebel group that battled the decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But he switched sides to join the Taleban when Sayyaf formed an alliance with the US-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The Pakistani official said Yasir's real name was Ustad Zumarck, and that he had also been a professor at Kabul University.
