Local sources say the Taliban administration has detained Muhtasim Agha Jan, a former senior member of the group, from his religious school in the city of Kandahar. According to the sources, he was taken into custody after the Taliban intelligence forces surrounded his school.<\/p>\n
A source who asked not to be named said Taliban intelligence forces besieged Agha Jan\u2019s school on Sunday, 22 September, and detained him that evening. The source said Agha Jan was first taken to the intelligence directorate and then transferred to the Taliban police command in Kandahar city.<\/p>\n
The source added that the arrest took place after a number of religious scholars met with Muhtasim Agha Jan around midday on Sunday. According to him, the scholars were also present for lunch at his school, and Taliban forces moved in after the gathering ended.<\/p>\n
Muhtasim Agha Jan had previously criticised the Taliban administration for banning girls\u2019 education and had recently moved from Kabul to Kandahar. He was regarded as a close associate of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban founder, and served as finance minister during the group\u2019s first rule.<\/p>\n
According to reports, he is said to have returned to Afghanistan from the United Arab Emirates at the invitation of Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, the acting defence minister of the Taliban administration and son of Mullah Muhammad Omar. Reports also indicate that this is the third time Muhtasim Agha Jan has been detained, and that he was previously arrested by Taliban intelligence in the month of Hamal.<\/p>\n
Kandahar is one of Afghanistan\u2019s key southern provinces and is regarded as one of the main centres of influence and decision-making for the Taliban administration. Intelligence and police command are among the administration\u2019s key security bodies responsible for pursuing and arresting people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taliban forces detained former senior member Muhtasim Agha Jan in Kandahar after surrounding his religious school, local sources said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}