KOREA TIMES
05-11-2010 19:37
Taliban member caught in Korea
By Park Si-soo
Staff reporter
A Pakistani man arrested last month for illegal entry into the country has been confirmed to be a member of the Taliban, raising national security concerns with the G-20 summit in Seoul just six months away.
A joint investigation into Mohammad Salim by the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the prosecution and police is underway, focusing on why the 39-year-old disguised himself as a foreign fisherman to enter the country. Salim was detained on April 27.
The authorities say it has yet to confirm whether he was involved in a plot to commit a terrorist act here.
“It was confirmed Salim is affluent in Pakistan, meaning his illegal entry was not to make money here,” an investigator was quoted as saying by the daily Hankook Ilbo. “We are investigating every possibility at present.”
The Korean Immigration Service (KIS) and NIS had confirmed Salim was a Taliban member.
“We monitored him for a while after obtaining information that he was member,” Ahn Kyu-seok, a spokesman for KIS, told The Korea Times. “Based on the intelligence, immigration officials raided a brick factory in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, and caught him working there.”
The authorities are looking into his frequent trips to Daegu, Korea’s fourth largest city and about 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, since his landing in February last year. Daegu is hosting the World Championships in Athletics next year. The city is one hour from Changnyeong by car.
Investigators confirmed Salim had visited a mosque in Daegu every weekend, where another Pakistani national, who was also arrested for suspected connections with the Taliban, served as the Imam.
It has yet to be confirmed whether the two contacted each other.
According to the Hankook Ilbo, Salim was confirmed as a member of the Taliban by Pakistan’s intelligence service and a high-ranking officer covering a stronghold in the northwest part of the Southeast Asian country.
“We presume Salim snuck into the country to avoid the Pakistani government’s crackdown on the Taliban in late 2008,” an investigator said. “If it turns out to be true, he must be a key member of the insurgency group.”
According to investigators, Salim is inconsistent in explaining his personal history in Pakistan.
“Initially, he said he was forcibly trained by the Taliban for about 10 days and then fled. And then he bombed a house of Taliban members in an act of retaliation,” an investigator said. “But he recently blamed military bombing for the house explosion.”