Obama administration silent on Taliban leader’s detention

WASHINGTON - The White House has so far revealed very little about how Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy commander of the Taliban, was captured.

There is also no news about where he is being held and what intelligence, if any, he is providing.

Fox News quoted a Pakistani official in Karachi as saying that Baradar was apprehended in Karachi by a joint CIA-Pakistani operation and that he “was talking.

“This involves very sensitive intelligence matters. This involves the collection of intelligence, and it is best to do that and not to necessarily talk about it,” it further quoted White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, as saying.

In January 2009, Obama issued an executive order banning so-called “black sites,” classified locations where CIA and overseas security officials interrogated terrorists, and another executive order calling for the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The rules have changed for holding detainees on the battlefield, as well. Last summer, NATO instituted a 96-hour rule, which says that if any NATO or International Security Assistance Force soldiers, including Americans, can’t transfer captured terrorists or enemy combatants to the Afghan justice system within 96 hours, they have to be released.

“It is a big limitation,” a senior official in Afghanistan told Fox News at the time of the rule change.

There are some exceptions to that rule. If a wanted terrorist is picked up by a U.S. Special Forces unit working under the confines of Operation Enduring Freedom, rather than NATO, that prisoner would be sent to a detention facility at Bagram Air Base, where U.S. interrogators would be free to question him within the guidelines of the Army Field Manual.

The Obama administration so far has shown a preference for taking terror targets out by drone attacks. CIA-operated drone strikes have become particularly frequent in Pakistan. (ANI)