A U.S. drone strike in northeastern Kunar province killed Pakistan Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah, the insurgent leader who ordered the assassination of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman said Friday.
In a telephone interview, Mohammad Radmanish said Fazlullah and two other insurgents were killed early Thursday morning, just hours before Afghanistan's Taliban began a three-day cease fire to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The three-day holiday follows the end of Islam's holy month of Ramadan when devout adherents fast from sunrise to sunset.
FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2013 file photo, people watch a news report on TV about newly selected leader of Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah at a coffee shop in Islamabad, Pakistan. An Afghan defense ministry official says Friday, June 15, 2018 a US drone strike in northeastern Kunar province killed Pakistan Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah. Pakistan has been hunting Fazlullah for several years and has repeatedly said he was plotting attacks on Pakistan from safe havens in Afghanistan. The Arabic on the TV news report reads, "On April 21, 2011, fourteen troops were killed in an attack on a checkpoint in Dir." (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash, File)
However, Sakhi Mashwani, a Parliamentarian from Kunar province told the Associated Press that Fazlullah, along with five other insurgents, died when the strike slammed into the vehicle in which they were driving.
Mashwani said dozens of people, including Fazlullah's brother, Moheen Dada, gathered Friday in the Ghaziabad district of Kunar province, to offer prayers for the dead Taliban leader.
A U.S. official said the U.S. believes that it is likely the strike killed Fazlullah, but efforts are ongoing to confirm his death. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary information.
According to a statement attributed to U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesman Lt. Col Martin O'Donnell, the U.S. carried out a "counterterrorism strike" Thursday in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan targeting "a senior leader of a designated terrorist organization."
The statement did not say whether the strike had killed anyone and did not identify Fazlullah as the target. However, the statement did note that the drone attack did not violate a cease-fire announcement made June 7 by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban's promise of a temporary truce came on Monday.
Radmanish said the drone attack took place in Marawara district, near the border.
Pakistan's military refused to comment on the report of Fazlullah's death saying any information would have to come from Washington. Yet Fazlullah's death would be welcome news in Pakistan, where the government has repeatedly complained that Fazlullah and his Tehrik-e-Taliban had found safe havens across the border in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Kabul and Washington both complain that Pakistan has for years allowed Afghanistan's Taliban free movement as well as medical treatment for battlefield wounds.
Still, the recent cease-fire announcement by Afghanistan's Taliban is being at least partially credited to Pakistan, which some observers say has been pressing the leadership to accept President Ghani's recent peace overtures.
In his Eid greeting this week, Afghan Taliban chief Haibatullah Akhunzada repeated the Taliban demand for direct talks with the United States before opening negotiations with the Afghan government. Until now, Washington has refused.
FILE - In this file image made from video broadcast on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013, undated footage of Mullah Fazlullah is shown on a projector in Pakistan. An Afghan defense ministry official says Friday, June 15, 2018 a US drone strike in northeastern Kunar province killed Pakistan Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah. Pakistan has been hunting Fazlullah for several years and has repeatedly said he was plotting attacks on Pakistan from safe havens in Afghanistan. (AP Photo via AP Video, File)
It was Yousafzai's open call for girls' education and criticism of the Taliban that infuriated Fazlullah. She was just 14 when she survived the assassination attempt in 2012. Her return to her hometown earlier this year seemed a particular triumph as it was also to open a school funded by a charity she established to promote girls education globally.
She has often said that Fazlullah's attempts to silence her backfired and instead he amplified her voice around the world.
A ruthless leader, Fazlullah ordered the bombing and beheadings of dozens of opponents when his band of insurgents controlled Pakistan's picturesque Swat Valley from 2007 until a massive military operation routed them in 2009.
In Yousafzai's hometown of Mingora in the Swat Valley, residents welcomed reports of Fazlullah's death with one resident saying many feared he would return one day to re-impose his violent rule.
"We witnessed the brutality of the Taliban in Swat when Fazlullah and his men were present here and we are happy to know that he has gone to hell," said Idrees Khan, a member of a local elders peace committee. "People in Swat will feel safer after the killing of Fazlullah."
His insurgent group, the Tehrik-e-Taliban, also took responsibility for the brutal attack on an Army Public School in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar in December 2014 when more than 140 children and their teachers were slaughtered.
Survivors of the attack told of insurgents roaming through the school shooting their victims, some as young as six years old, in the head.
Mohammad Akhtar, whose 12-year-old son Fahad Khan died in the 2014 massacre, said he had been waiting for confirmation of "terrorist Fazlullah's" death.
"Thank God, he is dead," he said after returning from a visit to his son's grave.
Fazlullah rose to prominence through radio broadcasts in Swat demanding the imposition of Islamic law, earning him the nickname "Mullah Radio." His radio talks also aired the grievances of many in the northwest against the government, such as its slow-moving justice system. He also reached out to women, promising to address their complaints about not getting a fair share of their inheritance.
His brutality often included public beheadings, often of police officers. His exact age is not known but he was believed to be in his late 30s.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Crucial witnesses took the stand in the second week of testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial, including a California lawyer who negotiated deals at the center of the case and a longtime adviser to the former president.
Jurors heard a potentially pivotal piece of evidence — a 2016 recording of Trump discussing a plan to buy a Playboy model's silence — as well as testimony about the wrestler Hulk Hogan and hurricanes, literal and figurative.
Outside the jury's presence, Trump was fined for running afoul of a judge's gag order. Additional sanctions could await the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
A look at some of the highlights from the past week:
Hope Hicks, a onetime Trump confidant who for years was central in his orbit, described in detail a seminal moment of the 2016 campaign: The Washington Post's disclosure of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump boasted about grabbing women's genitals without their permission.
Hicks acknowledged being “concerned, very concerned” when a reporter reached out to her for comment before breaking the story.
"I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle for the next several days,” Hicks testified. “This was a damaging development.”
The recording, made public just days before a debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, is relevant to the case because prosecutors believe it helps explain the frenetic efforts by Trump and allies in the campaign's remaining weeks to try to suppress any additional harmful stories that might arise.
In fact, in the aftermath of the tape’s release, Hicks said she asked Michael Cohen, Trump's then-lawyer and personal fixer, to hunt down a rumor of another potentially damaging recording. “There was no such tape regardless," Hicks said, “but he sort of chased that down for me.”
Regardless, the immediate impact of the “Access Hollywood” story was so intense, Hicks recalled, that it took attention away from an actual storm. Hurricane Matthew was dominating the news cycle when Hicks was contacted about the forthcoming story. That didn't last long.
“The ‘Access Hollywood’ tape pushed the hurricane off the news?” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo asked.
“Yes,” Hicks replied.
Trump may be a criminal defendant, but an element of his defense came into view this past week when one of his lawyers suggested Trump might actually have been a victim.
Attorney Emil Bove implied during a notably tense cross-examination that his client had been effectively targeted for extortion by Keith Davidson, a crucial witness and the lawyer who negotiated hush money deals for two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, claiming to have had sexual encounters with Trump. Trump denies it.
Bove name-dropped a gaggle of celebrities he suggested had been coerced over the years into paying Davidson's clients eye-popping sums to suppress harmful videos or stories. Among them was actor Charlie Sheen, whom Bove said Davidson had “extracted sums of money from;” Davidson took issue with the word “extract” but said he had been involved in “valid settlements” with Sheen.
Davidson also acknowledge that he had faced an FBI investigation, but was never charged, for allegedly attempting to extort Hogan to head off the release of the professional wrestling star’s sex tape.
By 2016, Bove suggested, Davidson was well-versed in the concept of squeezing celebrities such as Trump.
“And you did everything that you could to get as close to that line as possible in these negotiations without crossing it, right?” Bove asked.
“I did everything I could to make sure my activities were lawful,” Davidson replied.
The prosecution's key witness, Cohen, has yet to testify — and Trump might never at all — but their voices were played in the courtroom in perhaps the most vivid piece of evidence so far.
Prosecutors played aloud a September 2016 recording that Cohen made of himself briefing the then-presidential candidate on a plan to buy McDougal's silence with a $150,000 payment. McDougal was prepared to come forward with her account of an extramarital affair with Trump, a disclosure Trump and his allies were determined to prevent in the final days of the election.
“What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump can be heard saying at one point.
They discuss whether the payment should be done with cash or check. Then the recording cuts out.
Though the existence of the recording surfaced in the summer of 2018 and has long been known to the public, its disclosure to the jury was a dramatic moment meant to establish that the hush money payment was done with Trump's knowledge.
He appeared visibly irritated as the recording was played. Jurors seemed riveted.
The recording was hardly the only time Cohen surfaced in court over the past week. When he did, it was generally in a negative light.
Davidson said his introduction to Cohen came in 2011 when Davidson was told that he needed to return an angry call from Cohen over a blog post related to Daniels and Trump. Davidson said Cohen was described to him by Daniels' talent manager as “some jerk” who have been “very, very aggressive and threatened to sue me.”
When Davidson called Cohen and introduced himself, “I was just met with, like, a hustle barrage of insults and insinuations and allegations. That went on for quite a while.”
Davidson also recounted a memorable phone conversation with Cohen one month after the 2016 election in which the Trump attorney sounded “depressed and despondent" and complained about being passed over for a role in the new Trump administration.
“He said something to the effect of: ‘Jesus Christ. Can you (expletive) believe I’m not going to Washington,’” Davidson described Cohen as saying. “'After everything I’ve done for that (expletive) guy. I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington. I’ve saved that guy’s (expletive) so many times, you don’t even know.'”
The uncharitable characterizations may help Trump's team in its efforts to undermine Cohen's credibility. But they could also help prosecutors distance themselves from Cohen, subtly indicating to jurors that he is not a teammate but rather someone who simply has information.
A side issue throughout the trial is what to do about Trump's outside-of-court comments. He repeatedly has maligned witnesses and suggested bias on the jury — all despite a judge's gag order meant to bar him from verbal tirades against key players in the case.
Trump was assessed a $9,000 fine — $1,000 for each of nine separate gag order violations that the judge identified. Prosecutors later requested an additional $4,000 penalty for what they said were additional breaches of the order.
Yet it remains unclear what, if anything, Judge Juan M. Merchan can do in the event of continued violations. Merchan floated the possibility of jail, an unprecedented outcome for a former American president. That also would risk inflaming Trump's base as he pursues the presidency and would further upend the 2024 White House race.
Trump's attorneys insist he needs some leeway to be able to respond to relentless criticism, including from witnesses, and that his candidacy means he's the subject of nonstop news media coverage.
Merchan seemed unpersuaded, but jail, for now at least, seems to be no one's desired outcome.
“Because each of these statements was made before the Court held the Defendant in contempt for violating this order nine previous times, and because we prefer to minimize disruptions to this proceeding, we are not yet seeking jail,” prosecutor Chris Conroy said.
“But,” he added, “the Court’s decision this past Tuesday will inform the approach we take to any future violations.”
Former President Donald Trump, center, talks with defense attorney Emil Bove, left, before the start of trial at Manhattan criminal court, Friday, May 3, 2024 in New York. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump Former President Donald Trump speaks to media as he returns to his trial at the Manhattan Criminal Court, Friday, May 3, 2024, in New York. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
Emil Bove, attorney for former President Donald Trump, sits in the courtroom at Manhattan criminal court in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - Stormy Daniels arrives at an event in Berlin, on Oct. 11, 2018. The porn actor received a $130,000 payment from Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen as part of his hush-money efforts. Cohen paid Daniels to keep quiet about what she says was a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. Trump denies having sex with Daniels. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
FILE - Michael Cohen arrives at New York Supreme Court Oct. 25, 2023, in New York. Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Cohen was once a fierce Trump ally, but now he's a key prosecution witness against his former boss in the Trump hush money trial. Cohen worked for the Trump Organization from 2006 to 2017. He later went to federal prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations relating to the hush-money arrangements and other, unrelated crimes. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
FILE - Hope Hicks, former White House Communications Director, arrives to meet with the House Intelligence Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 27, 2018. Prosecutors say Hicks spoke with former President Donald Trump by phone during a frenzied effort to keep allegations of his marital infidelity out of the press after the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape leaked weeks before the 2016 election. In the tape, from 2005, Trump boasted about grabbing women without permission. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media at Manhattan criminal court, Friday, May 3, 2024, in New York. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
