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Tribal body to decide arrested Taliban’s fate

MIRANSHAH: The fate of 10 tribesmen arrested on charges of attacking coalition forces inside Afghanistan will be decided by a 10-member committee monitoring an accord between pro-Taliban militants and the government in North Waziristan, a jirga member said on Friday.

“The committee will determine whether the arrested tribesmen were involved in the attack or not,” Maulana Muhammad Alam told Daily Times after discussing the issue with North Waziristan chief administrator Dr Fakhr-e-Alam. He said the 10 men were handed over to the jirga after security forces cordoned off a village in Lwara Mandi near the Pak-Afghan border a few days ago when the tribal jirga negotiated peaceful handover of the 10 suspects.

Security forces cordoned off the area after the US passed on information that some tribal militants crossed into Pakistan after attacking the international forces near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. The arrest comes after pro-Taliban militants struck a peace accord with the government on September 5 in Miranshah after more than two months long negotiations through a 45-member grand tribal Jirga.

“These people have denied having attacked the coalition forces,” Maulana Alam, who is also a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl leader, added. Maulana Alam said the committee monitoring progress and implementation of the accord would take up the issue of target killing, but he stopped short to say bodies of suspected spies did amount to target killing. A source said that the 10 men were in political administration’s custody, and it had not been decided if the committee would decide their fate. iqbal khattak

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