Court sentences Taliban leader to 42 years for kidnapping US journalist

ISLAMABAD, Jun 10 (APP): The Taliban commander who abducted an American journalist was sentenced to 42 years in prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to hostage taking and providing material support for terrorism, the New York Times reported.

The commander, Haji Najibullah, said in his guilty plea last year that he had supported Taliban members who intended to kill US troops and in 2008 had helped abduct David Rohde, then a reporter for The New York Times, as well as an Afghan journalist and driver accompanying him.

“Mr. Najibullah’s conduct included supporting and enabling terrorist acts,” Judge Katherine Polk Failla of Federal District Court in Manhattan said while issuing her sentence, adding that the defendant had carried out the hostage taking with “casual brutality” and “psychological torture.”

Prosecutors had asked Judge Failla for a life sentence, writing to the court that “it is difficult to imagine conduct more sinister and morally wrong than the hostage taking of civilians.” They added that Mr. Najibullah also bore responsibility for an attack in 2008, by fighters under his command, that killed three U.S. service members and an Afghan interpreter. Some of the victims’ bodies were mutilated or burned.

“The defendant led a violent insurgent group hellbent on killing Americans and their allies,” the prosecutors wrote.

Mr. Najibullah’s lawyers, who asked for a prison term of 18 years, wrote that while their client did not contest that his support of the Taliban resulted in the 2008 deaths, he maintained that he had not participated in or directed that attack and he had not been one of the “main overseers” of the kidnapping.

Before his sentencing on Tuesday, Mr. Najibullah addressed the court, apologizing to Mr. Rohde.

“What happened to him was terrible, and I deeply regret my role in it,” he said, before going on to list the ways in which, he said, he had suffered.

Mr. Rohde also spoke in court, naming the U.S. service members and Afghan translator who were killed in the 2008 attack, citing “the pain, loss and grief their friends and family endured,” and calling hostage taking “a cruel and cowardly crime.”

Mr. Rohde was an experienced correspondent trying to speak with Mr. Najibullah while doing research for a book when he was abducted along with the Afghan journalist, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal.

Mr. Najibullah accused the three of being spies, according to prosecutors, and interrogated them for information about their families. The men under his command showed the captives Taliban propaganda videos that included footage of beheadings, prosecutors added.

The captors tried for months to use Mr. Rohde and the others for ransom payments and the release of Taliban prisoners. The hostages were forced to make calls and videos pleading for help, according to court papers, including one in which Mr. Rohde asked for his life to be spared while a machine gun was pointed at his face.

After seven months of captivity, Mr. Rohde and Mr. Ludin escaped from a Taliban compound, using a scavenged piece of rope to climb down a wall at night before walking to a Pakistani military base. Mr. Mangal fled about five weeks later during a firefight, prosecutors wrote.