Interrogation of Afghanistan Taliban's No. 2 yields useful intel, US says

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US military officials have announced that interrogation of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghanistan Taliban’s second-in-command who was captured in Pakistan in February, has started producing useful intelligence on the group and its operations.

The announcement comes a day after Pakistani militants released video clips of three hostages missing from the country’s tribal areas since March. In the video, the hostages say they will be killed if three Afghan Taliban leaders, including Mullah Baradar, are not released from Pakistani custody.

According to Reuters, US military officials have been able to verify some information supplied by Mullah Baradar about the Afghan Taliban’s operations against US forces.

With Baradar in Pakistani custody, direct US access to him was minimal at first. But US officials said the ISI has eased restrictions and American investigators have been participating regularly and directly in interrogation sessions for at least the past month.

Some of the information given by Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's longtime military commander, has been verified and was useful to US commanders and intelligence officers and analysts in both Afghanistan and Washington, three US officials involved in the matter said….

"These things take time," one US military official said of interrogating Baradar. "It takes time to get the information and it takes time to check out that information."

Mullah Baradar, along with six other leaders of the Afghan Taliban’s leadership council, thought to have been based in western Pakistani city of Quetta, were apprehended in February this year, reported The Christian Science Monitor. Mullah Baradar was arrested in a joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence officials in the southern port city of Karachi in a move that signaled Pakistan’s changing attitude toward the Afghan Taliban.

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