Man detained in Afghan says he was recruited by Pak’s ISI to become suicide bomber
The man, who is kept in a prison cell on the outskirts of Kabul, says he was trained to be a suicide bomber in the Taliban's intensifying military campaign against the Western coalition forces.
A young man detained by the Afghan Intelligence Service has alleged that he was recruited earlier this year by Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to become a suicide bomber, according to a media report.The man, who is kept in a prison cell on the outskirts of Kabul, says he was trained to be a suicide bomber in the Taliban's intensifying military campaign against the Western coalition forces, and that preparations for his mission were overseen by an ISI officer in a camp in Pakistan, the BBC reports."There were three of us. We were put into a black vehicle with black windows. The police did not stop the car because it was obviously ISI. No-one dares stop their cars. They told me... you will receive your explosive waistcoat, and then go and explode it," he was quoted as saying.The man, recruited to be a suicide bomber, however changed his mind at the last minute and was later captured by the Afghan intelligence service. But his story is consistent with a mass of intelligence which has convinced the Americans that, as they suspected, Pakistan has been secretly arming and supporting the Taliban for the last decade in its attempt to regain control of Afghanistan, the report said.These suspicions started as early as 2002, when the Taliban began launching attacks across the border from their bases in Pakistan, but they became more widely held after 2006 when the Taliban's assault increased in its ferocity, according to the report.The final turning point in American eyes was the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack when 10 gunmen rampaged through the Indian city, killing 170 people - two weeks after Barack Obama's US presidential election victory in November 2008, the report added. US President Barack Obama ordered a review of all intelligence on the region by a veteran CIA officer, Bruce Riedel."Our own intelligence was unequivocal. In Afghanistan we saw an insurgency that was not only getting passive support from the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, but getting active support," Riedel was quoted as saying.Evidence of Pakistan's support for the Taliban is also plain to see at the border where insurgents are allowed to cross at will, or even helped to evade US patrols, the report said.And the recent drone attacks in Pakistan have become increasingly effective as intelligence has been withheld from the Pakistanis, according to Riedel.